but we must wait a little.  Yes, I used to talk like that, and now I ask, ‘For what reason are we to wait?’” asked Ivan Ivanovitch, looking angrily at Burkin.  “Why wait, I ask you?  What grounds have we for waiting?  I shall be told, it can’t be done all at once; every idea takes shape in life gradually, in its due time.  But who is it says that?  Where is the proof that it’s right?  You will fall back upon the natural order of things, the uniformity of phenomena; but is there order and uniformity in the fact that I, a living, thinking man, stand over a chasm and wait for it to close of itself, or to fill up with mud at the very time when perhaps I might leap over it or build a bridge across it?  And again, wait for the sake of what?  Wait till there’s no strength to live?  And meanwhile one must live, and one wants to live!

“I went away from my brother’s early in the morning, and ever since then it has been unbearable for me to be in town.  I am oppressed by its peace and quiet; I am afraid to look at the windows, for there is no spectacle more painful to me now than the sight of a happy family sitting round the table drinking tea.  I am old and am not fit for the struggle; I am not even capable of hatred; I can only grieve inwardly, feel irritated and vexed; but at night my head is hot from the rush of ideas, and I cannot sleep....  Ah, if I were young!”

Ivan Ivanovitch walked backwards and forwards in excitement, and repeated:  “If I were young!”

He suddenly went up to Alehin and began pressing first one of his hands and then the other.

“Pavel Konstantinovitch,” he said in an imploring voice, “don’t be calm and contented, don’t let yourself be put to sleep!  While you are young, strong, confident, be not weary in well-doing!  There is no happiness, and there ought not to be; but if there is a meaning and an object in life, that meaning and object is not our happiness, but something greater and more rational.  Do good!”

And all this Ivan Ivanovitch said with a pitiful, imploring smile, as though he were asking him a personal favour.

Then all three sat in arm-chairs at different ends of the drawing-room and were silent.  Ivan Ivanovitch’s story had not satisfied either Burkin or Alehin.  When the generals and ladies gazed down from their gilt frames, looking in the dusk as though they were alive, it was dreary to listen to the story of the poor clerk who ate gooseberries.  They felt inclined, for some reason, to talk about elegant people, about women.  And their sitting in the drawing-room where everything—­the chandeliers in their covers, the arm-chairs, and the carpet under their feet—­reminded them that those very people who were now looking down from their frames had once moved about, sat, drunk tea in this room, and the fact that lovely Pelagea was moving noiselessly about was better than any story.

Alehin was fearfully sleepy; he had got up early, before three o’clock in the morning, to look after his work, and now his eyes were closing; but he was afraid his visitors might tell some interesting story after he had gone, and he lingered on.  He did not go into the question whether what Ivan Ivanovitch had just said was right and true.  His visitors did not talk of groats, nor of hay, nor of tar, but of something that had no direct bearing on his life, and he was glad and wanted them to go on.