"Really, why are you so sad?" asked Foma again, glancing at her gloomy
face.

She turned to him and said with enthusiasm and anxiety:

"Ah, Foma! What a book I've read! If you could only understand it!"

"It must be a good book, since it worked you up in this way," said Foma,
smiling.

"I did not sleep. I read all night long. Just think of it: you read--and
it seems to you that the gates of another kingdom are thrown open
before you. And the people there are different, and their language is
different, everything different! Life itself is different there."

"I don't like this," said Foma, dissatisfied. "That's all fiction,
deceit; so is the theatre. The merchants are ridiculed there. Are they
really so stupid? Of course! Take your father, for example."

"The theatre and the school are one and the same, Foma," said Luba,
instructively. "The merchants used to be like this. And what deceit can
there be in books?"

"Just as in fairy--tales, nothing is real."

"You are wrong! You have read no books; how can you judge? Books are
precisely real. They teach you how to live."

"Come, come!" Foma waved his hand. "Drop it; no good will come out of
your books! There, take your father, for example, does he read books?
And yet he is clever! I looked at him today and envied him. His
relations with everybody are so free, so clever, he has a word for each
and every one. You can see at once that whatever he should desire he is
sure to attain."

"What is he striving for?" exclaimed Luba. "Nothing but money. But there
are people that want happiness for all on earth, and to gain this end
they work without sparing themselves; they suffer and perish! How can my
father be compared with these?"

"You need not compare them. They evidently like one thing, while your
father likes another."

"They do not like anything!"

How's that?

"They want to change everything."

"So they do strive for something?" said Foma, thoughtfully. "They do
wish for something?"

"They wish for happiness for all!" cried Luba, hotly. "I can't
understand this," said Foma, nodding his head. "Who cares there for my
happiness? And then again, what happiness can they give me, since I,
myself, do not know as yet what I want? No, you should have rather
looked at those that were at the banquet."

"Those are not men!" announced Luba, categorically.

"I do not know what they are in your eyes, but you can see at once that
they know their place. A clever, e