"That you are not wealthy. You said it so simply, so without any false shame, so without the least arrière pensée. Apropos, the consciousness of the ordinary person who both knows and confesses that he or she is poor always seems to me to contain more than the mere words imply—it harbours also a touch of vanity."
"I have, thanks to my sister, had no experience of poverty. And as for my possessions, I mentioned them only because the words came of themselves to my lips."
"Quite so. Yet confess that you too harbour a grain of the vanity to which I have alluded."
"Give me an example of my doing so."
"An example? Well, may I ask why you have not married a rich man?"
"Were I to love such a one very much, I——But no man of that sort has come my way: wherefore I have made no such marriage."
"There, now!" cried Arkady. "But why should you not do so in the future?"
"Because even the poets deprecate mésalliances."
"You mean that you wish either to rule or——?"
"Oh no! What good would that be? On the contrary, I am prepared to be ruled, even though I believe that inequality in any form works badly. A union of self-respect with submission—that is what I best understand, that is what spells true happiness. A mere subordinate existence is—well, something which I do not fancy."