I wrote something, no longer listening to Sidorov's whisper. I wrote of the misery and repulsiveness of life, and he said to me, sighing: "You have written a lot; thank you. Now she will know what she has to be afraid of." "There is nothing for her to be afraid of," I said angrily, although I was afraid of many things myself. The soldier laughed, and cleared his throat. "What an oddity you are! How is there nothing to be afraid of? What about gentlemen, and God? Is n't that something?" When he received a letter from his sister he said restlessly: "Read it, please. Be quick!" And he made me read the badly scrawled, insultingly short, and nonsensical letter three times. He was good and kind, but he behaved toward women like all the others; that is, with the primitive coarseness of an animal. Willingly and unwillingly, as I observed these affairs, which often went on under my eyes, beginning and ending with striking and impure swiftness, I saw Sidorov arouse in the breast of a woman a kind feeling of pity for him in his soldier's life, then intoxicate her with tender lies, and then tell Ermokhin of his conquest, frowning and spitting his disgust, just as if he had been taking some bitter medicine. This made my heart ache, and I angrily asked the soldiers why they all deceived women, lied to them, and then, jeering among themselves at the woman they had treated so, gave her away and often beat her. One of them laughed softly, and said: "It is not necessary for you to know anything about such things. It is all very bad; it is sin. You are young; it is too early for you." But one day I obtained a more definite answer, which I have always remembered. "Do you think that she does not know that I am deceiving her?" he said, blinking and coughing. "She kno-o-ows. She wants to be deceived. Everybody lies in such affairs; they are a disgrace to all concerned. There is no love on either side; it is simply an amusement. It is a dreadful disgrace. Wait, and you will know for yourself. It was for that God drove them out of paradise, and from that all unhappiness has come." He spoke so well, so sadly, and so penitently that he reconciled me a little to these "romances." I began to have a more friendly feeling toward him than towards Ermokhin, whom I hated, and seized every occasion of mocking and teasing. I succeeded in this, and he often pursued me across the yard with some evil design, which only his clumsiness prevented him from executing. "It is forbidden," went on Sidorov, speaking of women. That it was forbidden I knew, but that it was the cause of human unhappiness I did not believe. I saw that people were unhappy, but I did not believe what he said, because I sometimes saw an extraordinary expression in the eyes of people in love, and was aware of a peculiar tenderness in those who loved. To witness this festival of the heart was always pleasant to me.