rather embarrassing thing to explain, but I must say what I think—I find the second cause in the fact that her relations to society were abnormal and unpleasant; it was hard for her to endure the fact that society would not acknowledge formally her right to occupy such a position. And so I saw that my existence near her would be trying for her. I shall not hide that, in this new discovery, there was a side that was incomparably harder for me to endure that all feeling which I had experienced in the former stages of the case. I had preserved towards her a very strong inclination. I wanted to remain a very close and intimate friend of hers; I hoped that this would be so. And after I saw that this could not be, I was greatly grieved; and here there was no compensation for this grief in personal calculations of any sort whatever. I may say that here my final decision was adopted exclusively, because of my attachment to her, only for the desire of making her better, exclusively from unselfish motives. Consequently, never before, even in our happiest time, did my relations toward her afford me such deep inward satisfaction as this decision. Here I acted under the action of what I frankly call nobility, or, to use a more suitable term, noble calculation,—a calculation in which the general law of humanity acts exclusively by itself, without borrowing support from individual peculiarities. And here I learned what a great pleasure it is to feel yourself acting like a noble man; that is, as every man ought to act, not Ivan or Peter, but every man, every one, without distinction of names. What a lofty delight it is to feel yourself simply a man—not Ivan, not Peter, but a man,—simply and purely a man! This feeling is too strong. Ordinary natures like mine cannot endure too often an elevation to the height of this feeling; but happy is the one who has had the chance to experience it.
"There is no need of explaining that side of my mode of action which would have been most unreasonable in transactions with other people, but which here is very obviously justified by the character of the person to whom I yield. At the time when I left for Riazan, there had not a word passed between her and Aleksandr Matvéitch; at the time which I made my final decision there had not a word passed between him and me, or between her and me, on this subject. But I knew him very well; I had no need of studying his thoughts for the sake of learning them."
