‘What an absorbed... and what an indifferent face!’ he muttered. ‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘allow me to tell you a little anecdote. I had a friend, and this friend also had a friend, who at first conducted himself as befits a gentleman but afterwards took to drink. So one day early in the morning, my friend meets him in the street (and by that time, note, the acquaintance has been completely dropped) meets him and sees he is drunk. My friend went and turned his back on him. But he ran up and said, “I would not be angry,” says he, “if you refused to recognise me, but why should you turn your back on me? Perhaps I have been brought to this through grief. Peace to my ashes!”’ Shubin paused. ‘And is that all?’ inquired Elena. ‘Yes that’s all.’ ‘I don’t understand you. What are you hinting at? You told me just now not to look your way.’ ‘Yes, and now I have told you that it’s too bad to turn your back on me.’ ‘But did I?’ began Elena. ‘Did you not?’ Elena flushed slightly and held out her hand to Shubin. He pressed it warmly. ‘Here you seem to have convicted me of a bad feeling,’ said Elena, ‘but your suspicion is unjust. I was not even thinking of avoiding you.’ ‘Granted, granted. But you must acknowledge that at that minute you had a thousand ideas in your head of which you would not confide one to me. Eh? I’ve spoken the truth, I’m quite sure?’ ‘Perhaps so.’ ‘And why is it? why?’ ‘My ideas are not clear to myself,’ said Elena. ‘Then it’s just the time for confiding them to some one else,’ put in Shubin. ‘But I will tell you what it really is. You have a bad opinion of me.’ ‘I?’ ‘Yes you; you imagine that everything in me is half-humbug because I am an artist, that I am incapable not only of doing anything--in that you are very likely right--but even of any genuine deep feeling; you think that I am not capable even of weeping sincerely, that I’m a gossip and a slanderer,--and all because I’m an artist. What luckless, God-forsaken wretches we artists are after that! You, for instance, I am ready to adore, and you don’t believe in my repentance.’ ‘No, Pavel Yakovlitch, I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears. But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes and your tears too.’ Shubin shuddered. ‘Well, I see this is, as the doctors say, a hopeless case, _casus incurabilis_. There is nothing left but to bow the head and submit. And meanwhile, good Heavens, can it be true, can I possibly be absorbed in my own egoism when there is a soul like this living at my side? And to know that one will never penetrate into that soul, never will know why it grieves and why it rejoices, what is working within it, what it desires--whither it is going... Tell me,’ he said after a short silence, ‘could you never under any circumstances love an artist?’ Elena looked straight into his eyes. ‘I don’t think so, Pavel Yakovlitch; no.’