‘I don’t altogether agree with you,’ he began: ‘nature does not always urge us... towards love.’ (He could not at once pronounce the word.) ‘Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful... yes, insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in her as loudly as life.’ ‘In love, too, there is both life and death,’ interposed Shubin. ‘And then,’ Bersenyev went on: ‘when I, for example, stand in the spring in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic notes of Oberon’s fairy horn’ (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he had spoken these words)--‘is that, too----’ ‘The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!’ broke in Shubin. ‘I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the expectation which come upon the soul in the forest’s shade, in its deep recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and the river mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and fields, and sky, every cloud and every blade of grass sets me expecting, hoping for happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice of happiness calling in everything. “God of my worship, bright and gay!” That was how I tried to begin my sole poem; you must own it’s a splendid first line, but I could never produce a second. Happiness! happiness! as long as life is not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!’ pursued Shubin with sudden vehemence, ‘we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will conquer happiness for ourselves!’ He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him. ‘Is there nothing higher than happiness?’ he commented softly. ‘And what, for instance?’ asked Shubin, stopping short. ‘Why, for instance, you and I are, as you say, young; we are good men, let us suppose; each of us desires happiness for himself.... But is that word, happiness, one that could unite us, set us both on fire, and make us clasp each other’s hands? Isn’t that word an egoistic one; I mean, isn’t it a source of disunion?’ ‘Do you know words, then, that unite men?’ ‘Yes; and they are not few in number; and you know them, too.’ ‘Eh? What words?’ ‘Well, even Art--since you are an artist--Country, Science, Freedom, Justice.’ ‘And what of love?’ asked Shubin. ‘Love, too, is a word that unites; but not the love you are eager for now; the love which is not enjoyment, the love which is self-sacrifice.’ Shubin frowned. ‘That’s all very well for Germans; I want to love for myself; I want to be first.’ ‘To be first,’ repeated Bersenyev. ‘But it seems to me that to put one’s-self in the second place is the whole significance of our life.’