‘Here you seem to have convicted me of a bad feeling,’ said Elena, ‘but your suspicion is unjust. I was not even thinking of avoiding you.’
‘Granted, granted. But you must acknowledge that at that minute you had a thousand ideas in your head of which you would not confide one to me. Eh? I’ve spoken the truth, I’m quite sure?’
‘Perhaps so.’
‘And why is it? why?’
‘My ideas are not clear to myself,’ said Elena.
‘Then it’s just the time for confiding them to some one else,’ put in Shubin. ‘But I will tell you what it really is. You have a bad opinion of me.’
‘I?’
‘Yes you; you imagine that everything in me is half-humbug because I am an artist, that I am incapable not only of doing anything—in that you are very likely right—but even of any genuine deep feeling; you think that I am not capable even of weeping sincerely, that I’m a gossip and a slanderer,—and all because I’m an artist. What luckless, God-forsaken wretches we artists are after that! You, for instance, I am ready to adore, and you don’t believe in my repentance.’
‘No, Pavel Yakovlitch, I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears. But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you—yes and your tears too.’
Shubin shuddered.