She listened to the sound of these beautiful, sad words and repeated them quietly: “To love--and to die!” And as she listened again, she heard him say: “She loved--and she died.” “What was the name of your first wife?” asked Elisaveta. She was amazed at herself for uttering the word “first,” as there had been only one; and her face became suffused slowly with pink. Trirodov fell into thought; he appeared not to have heard her question, and was silent. Elisaveta did not repeat it. He suddenly smiled and said: “You and I feel ourselves to be living people here, and what can there be for us more certain than our life, our sensation of life? And yet it is possible that you and I are not living people at all, but only characters in a novel, and that the author of this novel is not at all concerned with its external verisimilitude. His capricious imagination had taken this dark earth for its material, and out of this dark, sinful earth he grew these strange black maples and these mighty black poplars and these twittering birds in the bushes and us.” Elisaveta looked at him in astonishment and said with a smile: “I hope that the novel will be interesting and beautiful. Let it even end in death! But tell me, why do you write so little?” With unexpected passion, almost with exasperation, Trirodov replied: “Why should I write volumes of tales on how they fell in love and why they fell out of love, and all that? I write only that which comes from myself, that which has not yet been said. So much has already been said; it is far better to add a simple word of one’s own than write volumes of superfluities.” “Eternal themes are always one and the same,” said Elisaveta. “Do they not constitute the content of great art?” “We never originate,” said Trirodov. “We always appear in the world with a ready inheritance. We are the eternal successors. That is why we are not free. We see the world with others’ eyes, the eyes of the dead. But I live only when I make everything my own.” * * * * * And while these two spent their hours in conversing, Piotr usually made his way somewhere to the top of the house. He sometimes descended with his eyes red--red from tears or from the vigorous, high wind. His days dragged on miserably. His hate and jealousy of Trirodov now and again tormented him. Piotr sometimes made unpleasant, pitiful scenes before Elisaveta. He loved her and he hated her. He would have killed her--had he dared! And he had not the force to hate either Elisaveta or Trirodov to the bitter end. When he learned to know Trirodov better his hate lost something of its venom, his malice no longer irritated him like nettles. He looked with curiosity upon them and began to understand. The agony of his unconscious fury was replaced by a clear contemplation of the separating abyss; and this made him even more miserable.