“Well, most assuredly not in perpetual sighing and groaning, or incessant questionings such as, ‘I sneezed just now. Was that the right thing to do? Will it not cause harm to some one? Have I, in sneezing, fulfilled my destiny?’”
Yourii could read hatred in the speaker’s cold eyes, and it infuriated him to think that Ivanoff considered himself his superior intellectually, and was laughing at him.
“We’ll soon see,” he thought.
“That’s not a programme,” he retorted, striving to let his face express intense disdain, as well as reluctance to pursue the discussion.
“Do you really need one? If I desire, and am able, to do something, I do it. That’s my programme!”
“A fine one indeed!” exclaimed Schafroff hotly, Yourii merely shrugged his shoulders and made no reply.
For a while they all went on drinking in silence. Then Yourii turned to Sanine and proceeded to expound his views concerning the Supreme Good. He intended Ivanoff to hear what he said, though he did not look at him. Schafroff listened with reverence and enthusiasm. While Ivanoff who had partly turned his back to Yourii received each new statement with a mocking “We’ve heard all that before!”
At last Sanine languidly interposed.
“Oh! do stop all this,” he said. “Don’t you find it terribly boring? Every man is entitled to his own opinion, surely?”
He slowly lit a cigarette and went out into the courtyard. To his heated body the calm, blue night was deliciously soothing. Behind the wood the moon rose upward, like a globe of gold, shedding soft, strange light over the dark world. At the back of the orchard with its odour of apples and plums the other white-walled hospice could be dimly seen, and one of the lighted windows seemed to peer down at Sanine through its fence of tender leaves. Suddenly a sound was heard of naked feet pattering on the grass, and Sanine saw the figure of a boy emerge from the gloom.