Shubin; and suddenly grinning and
brightening,--'but I didn't like it, my dear boy, the stuff sticks in my
throat, and my head afterwards is a perfect drum. The great Lushtchihin
himself--Harlampy Lushtchihin--the greatest drunkard in Moscow, and a
Great Russian drunkard too, declared there was nothing to be made of me.
In his words, the bottle does not speak to me.'

Bersenyev was just going to knock the group over but Shubin stopped him.

'That'll do, my dear boy, don't smash it; it will serve as a lesson, a
scare-crow.'

Bersenyev laughed.

'If that's what it is, I will spare your scarecrow then,' he said. And
now, 'Long live eternal true art!'

'Long live true art!' put in Shubin. 'By art the good is better and the
bad is not all loss!'

The friends shook hands warmly and parted.

XXI

Elena's first sensation on awakening was one of happy consternation.
'Is it possible? Is it possible?' she asked herself, and her heart
grew faint with happiness. Recollections came rushing on her... she was
overwhelmed by them. Then again she was enfolded by the blissful peace
of triumph. But in the course of the morning, Elena gradually became
possessed by a spirit of unrest, and for the remainder of the day she
felt listless and weary. It was true she knew now what she wanted, but
that made it no easier for her. That never-to-be forgotten meeting had
cast her for ever out of the old groove; she was no longer at the same
standpoint, she was far away, and yet everything went on about her
in its accustomed order, everything pursued its own course as though
nothing were changed; the old life moved on its old way, reckoning on
Elena's interest and co-operation as of old. She tried to begin a letter
to Insarov, but that too was a failure; the words came on to paper
either lifeless or false. Her diary she had put an end to by drawing a
thick stroke under the last line. That was the past, and every thought,
all her soul, was turned now to the future. Her heart was heavy. To sit
with her mother who suspected nothing, to listen to her, answer her and
talk to her, seemed to Elena something wicked; she felt the presence of
a kind of falseness in her, she suffered though she had nothing to blush
for; more than once an almost irresistible desire sprang up in her
heart to tell everything without reserve, whatever might come of it
afterwards. 'Why,' she thought, 'did not Dmitri take me away then, from
that little chapel, wherever