A week passed.
There came a day when Dmitri, feeling that almost any time now his soul might leave his body never to return, decided to stay indoors and give a final revision to the little book he had written.
His bedroom window looked upon a narrow street. Across the way was a wine-shop, and even at this early hour a few men were sitting drinking at the little tables placed on the pavement. For a few minutes Dmitri stood gazing lovingly and compassionately at the passers-by; then, abruptly, and with a sudden sigh, he turned away, and sat down at a small table upon which he had placed the MS. of his book.
He read steadily from the beginning. Half-way through he came upon this passage.
The soul clings to its body; the spirit yearns for its companion-flesh. Is it true that only death can separate them?
It is impossible for us to love others more than we love ourselves, if our souls cling to us in this despairing way. Loving is giving: loving is surrender of one’s self: one’s self is one’s soul.... But my soul refuses to be surrendered. It will not leave me. Even when, because of my love for others, I try to banish it from my body, it will not go, or, if it does go, it soon returns. Is it refused, I wonder, by those to whom I give it?
Often I feel people wanting me; often I feel them asking for me. The magnetic ones draw me.
He sat and pondered. He recalled how, throughout the whole of his life, he had with joy spent himself upon others. A passion for giving had always been his. As a boy, he frequently had felt an aching desire to give himself to the sea—to swim out into the depths and, spreading out his arms, swoon away into nothingness, making himself a part of that water. Sometimes, even, he had wanted to give himself to fire, to walk naked into a white, inviting furnace. And, always, when on the edge of a cliff, he felt the great pull of space—a quick eagerness to disappear, to dissipate himself into nothingness.... To give himself—no matter to what, if only it were greater than he—was the passion that haunted him continually. Not to cease his existence; not to cast the universe from him; not to repudiate the life that had been given him. But to live more fiercely in flame, more largely and grandly as a part of a great giant ocean, more freely as an atom in illimitable space.
Best of all, to give himself to humanity: not to live in one body, but in a million bodies....
As he sat, a thought came to him—a thought that thrust into and pierced him, as a sword thrusts and pierces, that shook him to the very foundations of his being.