'Listen, Alexey! I said just now I had refused the happiness of love, renounced it so as to be wholly at the service of my convictions.. . . That was nonsense, bragging! I have never been offered anything of that sort, I have had nothing to renounce! I was born without gifts, and so I have remained.. . . And perhaps it was right it should be so. Since I can't attain to that, I have to do something else! Since you can combine both . . . can love and be loved . . . and at the same time serve the cause . . . well, you're a fine fellow! I envy you . . . but it 's not so with me. I can't. You are happy! You are happy! I can't.'
Markelov said all this in a subdued voice, sitting on a low chair, his head bent and his arms hanging loose at his sides. Nezhdanov stood before him, plunged in a sort of dreamy attention, and though Markelov called him happy, he neither looked nor felt happy.
'I was deceived in my youth,' . . . Markelov went on; 'she was an exquisite girl, and yet she jilted me . . . and for whom? For a German! for an adjutant! while Marianna———'
He stopped.. . . For the first time he had uttered her name, and it seemed to burn his lips.
8
