"I want to ask you," she said in a low, soft voice, "what you read all the time."
He put his book aside and said to her:
"Sit down, mother."
The mother sat down heavily at his side, and straightening herself into an attitude of intense, painful expectation waited for something momentous.
Without looking at her, Pavel spoke, not loudly, but for some reason very sternly:
"I am reading forbidden books. They are forbidden to be read because they tell the truth about our—about the workingmen's life. They are printed in secret, and if I am found with them I will be put in prison—I will be put in prison because I want to know the truth."
Breathing suddenly became difficult for her. Opening her eyes wide she looked at her son, and he seemed to her new, as if a stranger. His voice was different, lower, deeper, more sonorous. He pinched his thin, downy mustache, and looked oddly askance into the corner. She grew anxious for her son and pitied him.
"Why do you do this, Pasha?"
He raised his head, looked at her, and said in a low, calm voice:
"I want to know the truth."