you are
wasting your best years in goodness knows what. Like some alchemist,
you are rummaging in old rubbish that nobody wants. My God!"

Vladimir Semyonitch dropped his pen and slowly looked round at his
sister.

"It's depressing to look at you!" said his sister. "Wagner in 'Faust'
dug up worms, but he was looking for a treasure, anyway, and you
are looking for worms for the sake of the worms."

"That's vague!"

"Yes, Volodya; all these days I've been thinking, I've been thinking
painfully for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that
you are hopelessly reactionary and conventional. Come, ask yourself
what is the object of your zealous, conscientious work? Tell me,
what is it? Why, everything has long ago been extracted that can
be extracted from that rubbish in which you are always rummaging.
You may pound water in a mortar and analyse it as long as you like,
you'll make nothing more of it than the chemists have made
already. . . ."

"Indeed!" drawled Vladimir Semyonitch, getting up. "Yes, all this
is old rubbish because these ideas are eternal; but what do you
consider new, then?"

"You undertake to work in the domain of thought; it is for you to
think of something new. It's not for me to teach you."

"Me--an alchemist!" the critic cried in wonder and indignation,
screwing up his eyes ironically. "Art, progress--all that is
alchemy?"

"You see, Volodya, it seems to me that if all you thinking people
had set yourselves to solving great problems, all these little
questions that you fuss about now would solve themselves by the
way. If you go up in a balloon to see a town, you will incidentally,
without any effort, see the fields and the villages and the rivers
as well. When stearine is manufactured, you get glycerine as a
by-product. It seems to me that contemporary thought has settled
on one spot and stuck to it. It is prejudiced, apathetic, timid,
afraid to take a wide titanic flight, just as you and I are afraid
to climb on a high mountain; it is conservative."

Such conversations could not but leave traces. The relations of the
brother and sister grew more and more strained every day. The brother
became unable to work in his sister's presence, and grew irritable
when he knew his sister was lying on the sofa, looking at his back;
while the sister frowned nervously and stretched when, trying to
bring back the past, he attempted to share his enthusiasms with
her. Every evening she complained of