‘Yes, I must,’ said Insarov; and he said nothing more all the way home. He at once shut himself up in his room, but his candle was burning long after midnight. Bersenyev had had time to read a page of Raumer, when a handful of fine gravel came rattling on his window-pane. He could not help starting; opening the window he saw Shubin as white as a sheet. ‘What an irrepressible fellow you are, you night moth----’ Bersenyev was beginning. ‘Sh--’ Shubin cut him short; ‘I have come to you in secret, as Max went to Agatha I absolutely must say a few words to you alone.’ ‘Come into the room then.’ ‘No, that’s not necessary,’ replied Shubin, and he leaned his elbows on the window-sill, ‘it’s better fun like this, more as if we were in Spain. To begin with, I congratulate you, you’re at a premium now. Your belauded, exceptional man has quite missed fire. That I’ll guarantee. And to prove my impartiality, listen--here’s the sum and substance of Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the talk’s about his--between ourselves let it be said--tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you’ll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with him. I, of course, as an artist, am hateful to him; and I am proud of it. Dry as dust, dry as dust, but he can crush all of us to powder. He’s devoted to his country--not like our empty patriots who fawn on the people; pour into us, they say, thou living water! But, of course, his problem is easier, more intelligible: he has only to drive the Turks out, a mighty task. But all these qualities, thank God, don’t please women. There’s no fascination, no charm about them, as there is about you and me.’ ‘Why do you bring me in?’ muttered Bersenyev. ‘And you are wrong in all the rest; you are not in the least hateful to him, and with his own countrymen he is on Christian name terms--that I know.’ ‘That’s a different matter! For them he’s a hero; but, to make a confession, I have a very different idea of a hero; a hero ought not to be able to talk; a hero should roar like a bull, but when he butts with his horns, the walls shake. He ought not to know himself why he butts at things, but just to butt at them. But, perhaps, in our days heroes of a different stamp are needed.’ ‘Why are you so taken up with Insarov?’ asked Bersenyev. ‘Can you have run here only to describe his character to me?’ ‘I came here,’ began Shubin, ‘because I was very miserable at home.’ ‘Oh, that’s it! Don’t you want to have a cry again?’ ‘You may laugh! I came here because I’m at my wits’ end, because I am devoured by despair, anger, jealousy.’ ‘Jealousy? of whom?’