MARY IVÁNOVNA. Not at all.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Anyhow, I saw that I was terribly unhappy, and that I made you and the children unhappy, and I asked myself: “Is it possible that God created us for this end?” And as soon as I thought of it, I felt at once that he had not. I asked myself: “What, then, has God created us for?”
Enter Man-servant.
MARY IVÁNOVNA [Not listening to her husband, turns to Servant] Bring some boiled cream.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. And in the Gospels I found the answer, that we certainly should not live for our own sake. That revealed itself to me very clearly once, when I was pondering over the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. You know?
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Yes, the labourers.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. That parable seemed to show me more clearly than anything else where my mistake had been. Like those labourers I had thought that the vineyard was my own, and that my life was my own, and everything seemed dreadful; but as soon as I had understood that my life is not my own, but that I am sent into the world to do the will of God …
MARY IVÁNOVNA. But what of it? We all know that!
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Well, if we know it we cannot go on living as we are doing, for our whole life—far from being a fulfilment of His will—is, on the contrary, a continual transgression of it.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. But how is it a transgression—when we live without doing harm to anyone?