idently,
however.

"You mean to say you despise my past, and you are right," she said,
deeply stirred. "You belong to a special class of men who cannot
be judged by ordinary standards; your moral requirements are
exceptionally rigorous, and I understand you can't forgive things.
I understand you, and if sometimes I say the opposite, it doesn't
mean that I look at things differently from you; I speak the same
old nonsense simply because I haven't had time yet to wear out my
old clothes and prejudices. I, too, hate and despise my past, and
Orlov and my love. . . . What was that love? It's positively absurd
now," she said, going to the window and looking down at the canal.
"All this love only clouds the conscience and confuses the mind.
The meaning of life is to be found only in one thing--fighting.
To get one's heel on the vile head of the serpent and to crush it!
That's the meaning of life. In that alone or in nothing."

I told her long stories of my past, and described my really astounding
adventures. But of the change that had taken place in me I did not
say one word. She always listened to me with great attention, and
at interesting places she rubbed her hands as though vexed that it
had not yet been her lot to experience such adventures, such joys
and terrors. Then she would suddenly fall to musing and retreat
into herself, and I could see from her face that she was not attending
to me.

I closed the windows that looked out on the canal and asked whether
we should not have the fire lighted.

"No, never mind. I am not cold," she said, smiling listlessly. "I
only feel weak. Do you know, I fancy I have grown much wiser lately.
I have extraordinary, original ideas now. When I think of my past,
of my life then . . . people in general, in fact, it is all summed
up for me in the image of my stepmother. Coarse, insolent, soulless,
false, depraved, and a morphia maniac too. My father, who was feeble
and weak-willed, married my mother for her money and drove her into
consumption; but his second wife, my stepmother, he loved passionately,
insanely. . . . What I had to put up with! But what is the use of
talking! And so, as I say, it is all summed up in her image. . . .
And it vexes me that my stepmother is dead. I should like to meet
her now!"

"Why?"

"I don't know," she answered with a laugh and a graceful movement
of her head. "Good-night. You must get well. As soon as you are
well, we'll take up our work. . . It's