“Sasha, do look for the corkscrew,” I say.

Sasha leaps up again and rummages among the papers near me.  Her munching and rustling of the papers affects me like the sound of sharpening knives against each other. . . .  I get up and begin looking for the corkscrew myself.  At last it is found and the beer is uncorked.  Sasha remains by the table and begins telling me something at great length.

“You’d better read something, Sasha,” I say.

She takes up a book, sits down facing me and begins moving her lips . . . .  I look at her little forehead, moving lips, and sink into thought.

“She is getting on for twenty. . . .”  I reflect.  “If one takes a boy of the educated class and of that age and compares them, what a difference!  The boy would have knowledge and convictions and some intelligence.”

But I forgive that difference just as the low forehead and moving lips are forgiven.  I remember in my old Lovelace days I have cast off women for a stain on their stockings, or for one foolish word, or for not cleaning their teeth, and now I forgive everything:  the munching, the muddling about after the corkscrew, the slovenliness, the long talking about nothing that matters; I forgive it all almost unconsciously, with no effort of will, as though Sasha’s mistakes were my mistakes, and many things which would have made me wince in old days move me to tenderness and even rapture.  The explanation of this forgiveness of everything lies in my love for Sasha, but what is the explanation of the love itself, I really don’t know.

LIGHTS

The dog was barking excitedly outside.  And Ananyev the engineer, his assistant called Von Schtenberg, and I went out of the hut to see at whom it was barking.  I was the visitor, and might have remained indoors, but I must confess my head was a little dizzy from the wine I had drunk, and I was glad to get a breath of fresh air.

“There is nobody here,” said Ananyev when we went out.  “Why are you telling stories, Azorka?  You fool!”

There was not a soul in sight.

“The fool,” Azorka, a black house-dog, probably conscious of his guilt in barking for nothing and anxious to propitiate us, approached us, diffidently wagging his tail.  The engineer bent down and touched him between his ears.

“Why are you barking for nothing, creature?” he said in the tone in which good-natured people talk to children and dogs.  “Have you had a bad dream or what?  Here, doctor, let me commend to your attention,” he said, turning to me, “a wonderfully nervous subject!  Would you believe it, he can’t endure solitude—­he is always having terrible dreams and suffering from nightmares; and when you shout at him he has something like an attack of hysterics.”

“Yes, a dog of refined feelings,” the student chimed in.

Azorka must have understood that the conversation was concerning him.  He turned his head upwards and grinned plaintively, as though to say, “Yes, at times I suffer unbearably, but please excuse it!”