al,
because it will be voluntary. Even as it is, she was quite right: she
was suffering and that was her asset, so to speak, her capital which
she had a perfect right to dispose of. Of course, in the future
society there will be no need of assets, but her part will have another
significance, rational and in harmony with her environment. As to Sofya
Semyonovna personally, I regard her action as a vigorous protest against
the organisation of society, and I respect her deeply for it; I rejoice
indeed when I look at her!"

"I was told that you got her turned out of these lodgings."

Lebeziatnikov was enraged.

"That's another slander," he yelled. "It was not so at all! That was all
Katerina Ivanovna's invention, for she did not understand! And I never
made love to Sofya Semyonovna! I was simply developing her, entirely
disinterestedly, trying to rouse her to protest.... All I wanted was her
protest and Sofya Semyonovna could not have remained here anyway!"

"Have you asked her to join your community?"

"You keep on laughing and very inappropriately, allow me to tell
you. You don't understand! There is no such role in a community. The
community is established that there should be no such roles. In a
community, such a role is essentially transformed and what is stupid
here is sensible there, what, under present conditions, is unnatural
becomes perfectly natural in the community. It all depends on the
environment. It's all the environment and man himself is nothing. And
I am on good terms with Sofya Semyonovna to this day, which is a proof
that she never regarded me as having wronged her. I am trying now to
attract her to the community, but on quite, quite a different footing.
What are you laughing at? We are trying to establish a community of
our own, a special one, on a broader basis. We have gone further in our
convictions. We reject more! And meanwhile I'm still developing Sofya
Semyonovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!"

"And you take advantage of her fine character, eh? He-he!"

"No, no! Oh, no! On the contrary."

"Oh, on the contrary! He-he-he! A queer thing to say!"

"Believe me! Why should I disguise it? In fact, I feel it strange myself
how timid, chaste and modern she is with me!"

"And you, of course, are developing her... he-he! trying to prove to her
that all that modesty is nonsense?"

"Not at all, not at all! How coarsely, how stupidly--excuse me saying
so--you misunderstand the word de