"Maybe I'm talking nonsense. But life intoxicates me by its wonderful complexity, by the variety of its phenomena, which at times seem like a miracle to me. Perhaps we are too sparing in the expenditure of our feelings. We live a great deal in our thoughts, and that spoils us to a certain extent. We estimate, but we don't feel."
"Did anything good happen to you?" asked Sofya with a smile.
"Yes," said Sasha, nodding her head. "I had a whole night's talk with Vyesovshchikov. I didn't use to like him. He seemed rude and dull. Undoubtedly that's what he was. A dark, immovable irritation at everybody lived in him. He always used to place himself, as it were, like a dead weight in the center of things, and wrathfully say, 'I, I, I.' There was something bourgeois in this, low, and exasperating." She smiled, and again took in everybody with her burning look.
"Now he says: 'Comrades'—and you ought to hear how he says it, with what a stirring, tender love. He has grown marvelously simple and open-hearted, and possessed with a desire to work. He has found himself, he has measured his power, and knows what he is not. But the main thing is, a true comradely feeling has been born in him, a broad, loving comradeship, which smiles in the face of every difficulty in life."
Vlasova listened to Sasha attentively. She was glad to see this girl, always so stern, now softened, cheerful, and happy. Yet from some deeps of her soul arose the jealous thought: "And how about Pasha?"
"He's entirely absorbed in thoughts of the comrades," continued Sasha. "And do you know of what he assures me? Of the necessity of arranging an escape for them. He says it's a very simple, easy matter."
Sofya raised her head, and said animatedly:
"And what do you think, Sasha? Is it feasible?"
The mother trembled as she set a cup of tea on the table. Sasha knit her brows, her animation gone from her. After a moment's silence, she said in a serious voice, but smiling in joyous confusion:
"He's convinced. If everything is really as he says, we ought to try. It's our duty." She blushed, dropped into a chair, and lapsed into silence.