Véretyeff held her back. “Enough, enough. Stay!”—he cried.—“Come, why are you going? Issue your commands! Do you want me to enter the service, to become an agriculturist? Do you want me to publish romances with accompaniment for the guitar; to print a collection of poems, or of drawings; to busy myself with painting, sculpture, dancing on the rope? I’ll do anything, anything, anything you command, if only you will be satisfied with me! Come, really now, Másha, believe me.”
Again Márya Pávlovna looked at him.
“You will do all that in words only, not in deeds. You declare that you will obey me....”
“Of course I do.”
“You obey, but how many times have I begged you....”
“What about?”
Márya Pávlovna hesitated.
“Not to drink liquor,”—she said at last.
Véretyeff laughed.
“Ekh, Másha! And you are at it, too! My sister is worrying herself to death over that also. But, in the first place, I’m not a drunkard at all; and in the second place, do you know why I drink? Look yonder, at that swallow.... Do you see how boldly it manages its tiny body,—and hurls it wherever it wishes? Now it has soared aloft, now it has darted downward. It has even piped with joy: do you hear? So that’s why I drink, Másha, in order to feel those same sensations which that swallow experiences.... Hurl yourself whithersoever you will, soar wheresoever you take a fancy....”