‘Not at all. It’s a disgrace to a Russian not to know Bulgarian. A Russian ought to know all the Slavonic dialects. Would you like me to bring you some Bulgarian books? You will see how easy it is. What ballads we have! equal to the Servian. But stop a minute, I will translate to you one of them. It is about... But you know a little of our history at least, don’t you?’ ‘No, I know nothing of it,’ answered Elena. ‘Wait a little and I will bring you a book. You will learn the principal facts at least from it. Listen to the ballad then.... But I had better bring you a written translation, though. I am sure you will love us, you love all the oppressed. If you knew what a land of plenty ours is! And, meanwhile, it has been downtrodden, it has been ravaged,’ he went on, with an involuntary movement of his arm, and his face darkened; ‘we have been robbed of everything; everything, our churches, our laws, our lands; the unclean Turks drive us like cattle, butcher us----’ ‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch!’ cried Elena. He stopped. ‘I beg your pardon. I can’t speak of this coolly. But you asked me just now whether I love my country. What else can one love on earth? What is the one thing unchanging, what is above all doubts, what is it--next to God--one must believe in? And when that country needs. ... Think; the poorest peasant, the poorest beggar in Bulgaria, and I have the same desire. All of us have one aim. You can understand what strength, what confidence that gives!’ Insarov was silent for an instant; then he began again to talk of Bulgaria. Elena listened to him with absorbed, profound, and mournful attention. When he had finished, she asked him once more: ‘Then you would not stay in Russia for anything?’ And when he went away, for a long time she gazed after him. On that day he had become a different man for her. When she walked back with him through the garden, he was no longer the man she had met two hours before. From that day he began to come more and more often, and Bersenyev less and less often. A strange feeling began to grow up between the two friends, of which they were both conscious, but to which they could not give a name, and which they feared to analyse. In this way a month passed. XV