"Do not be so violent," Lensky replies. "You are not the first young man who has asserted that. Besides, I will not condemn her. Not the most faultless are the best. Human nature is not different. I would only be naturally very sorry if you, in spite of such a hateful circumstance, still would persist in your resolution."
"You need not fear, father," bursts out Nikolai, harshly. "I would never resolve to marry a dishonored, degraded girl. I would rather kill myself."
"Those are great words," says Lensky.
"They are words which express my convictions. I should not have let myself be drawn into speaking of my feelings to you. You see all in the same light."
"In the light of my experience, Colia, in the light of truth. I cannot help it if the world is as it is. The depth of our whole nature is mire, and nothing but mire!"
"Do not speak so inconsolably, father; I cannot bear it," says Nikolai, quite supplicatingly. "There is much that is beautiful everywhere, also in your life. Think of your art!"
"Of my art?" says Lensky. "Of my art!" he repeats with indescribably bitter emphasis. "Do you think that I do not know the condition of that? An art whose highest achievement is to rob a few hysterical women of the miserable remnant of respectability which they had. No; the effect of my art--what is left of it--is not calculated to restore me my lost idealism. I am sorry to have pained you; the last evening we should have passed comfortably together. It vexes me not to have learned to know her. If I had seen her, I could have told you exactly whether she is a wife for you or not."
All the time it is to Nikolai as if a cold, slippery monster which he could not shake off sat upon his breast.
"And have you in your whole life never been mistaken in a woman, never too lowly estimated her virtue?" asks he, somewhat sharply.
Lensky looks thoughtfully before him. Suddenly he shudders, then rising, he says, with the tone of a man who would fain break off a useless and painful conversation: "I am cold, Colia; come home. Why thresh mere straw?"