You see, theirs is pure love! They believe! Yes, indeed,
they believe, Andriusha! But here am I--I can't love like that! I
love my own, the near ones!"

"Yes, you can!" said the Little Russian, and turning away his face from
her, he rubbed his head, face, and eyes vigorously as was his wont.
"Everybody loves those who are near," he continued. "To a large heart,
what is far is also near. You, mother, are capable of a great deal.
You have a large capacity of motherliness!"

"God grant it!" she said quietly. "I feel that it is good to live like
that! Here are you, for instance, whom I love. Maybe I love you
better than I do Pasha. He is always so silent. Here he wants to get
married to Sashenka, for example, and he never told me, his mother, a
thing about it."

"That's not true," the Little Russian retorted abruptly. "I know it
isn't true. It's true he loves her, and she loves him. But marry? No,
they are not going to marry! She'd want to, but Pavel--he can't! He
doesn't want to!"

"See how you are!" said the mother quietly, and she fixed her eyes
sadly and musingly on the Little Russian's face. "You see how you are!
You offer up your own selves!"

"Pavel is a rare man!" the Little Russian uttered in a low voice. "He
is a man of iron!"

"Now he sits in prison," continued the mother reflectively. "It's
awful, it's terrible! It's not as it used to be before! Life
altogether is not as it used to be, and the terror is different from
the old terror. You feel a pity for everybody, and you are alarmed for
everybody! And the heart is different. The soul has opened its eyes,
it looks on, and is sad and glad at the same time. There's much I do
not understand, and I feel so bitter and hurt that you do not believe
in the Lord God. Well, I guess I can't help that! But I see and know
that you are good people. And you have consecrated yourselves to a
stern life for the sake of the people, to a life of hardship for the
sake of truth. The truth you stand for, I comprehend: as long as there
will be the rich, the people will get nothing, neither truth nor
happiness, nothing! Indeed, that's so, Andriusha! Here am I living
among you, while all this is going on. Sometimes at night my thoughts
wander off to my past. I think of my youthful strength trampled under
foot, of my young heart torn and beaten, and I feel sorry for myself
and embittered. But for all that I live better now, I see myself more
and mor