"Oh, if we could see and grasp Love's innermost being, its supernatural beauty and charm--we gross, blind earth-worms! How many know and feel what happiness, what delightful tortures exist in an undying, hopeless love? I remember, when I was a youth, how all my yearning took form and shape in this single dream: to fall in love with an ideally beautiful and noble woman far beyond my reach, and standing so high above me that every thought of possessing her I might harbour was mad and criminal; to consecrate to her all my life, all my thoughts, without her even suspecting it, and to carry my delightful, torturing secret with me to the grave; to be her slave, her lackey, her protector, or to employ a thousand arts just to see her once a year, to come close to her, and--oh, maddening rapture!--to touch the hem of her garment or kiss the ground on which she had walked----" "And to wind up in a mad-house," exclaimed Romashov in a gloomy tone. "Oh, my dear fellow, what does that matter?" cried Nasanski passionately. "Perhaps--who knows?--one might then attain to that state of bliss one reads of in stories. Which is best--to lose your wits through a love which can never be realized, or, like Ditz, to go stark mad from shameful, incurable diseases or slow paralysis? Just think what felicity--to stand all night in front of her window on the other side of the street. Look, there's a shadow visible behind the drawn curtain--can it be _she_? What's she doing? What's she thinking of? The light is lowered--sleep, my beloved, sleep in peace, for Love is keeping vigil. Days, months, years pass away; the moment at last arrives when Chance, perhaps, bestows on you her glove, handkerchief, the concert programme she has thrown away. She is not acquainted with you, does not even know that you exist. Her glance passes over you without seeing you; but there you stand with the same unchangeable, idolatrous adoration, ready to sacrifice yourself for her--nay, even for her slightest whim, for her husband, lover, her pet dog, to sacrifice life, honour, and all that you hold dear. Romashov, a bliss such as this can never fall to the lot of our Don Juans and lady-killers." "Ah, how true this is! how splendidly you speak!" cried Romashov, carried away by Nasanski's passionate words and gestures. Long before this he had got up from the window, and now he was walking, like his eccentric host, up and down the long, narrow room, pacing the floor with long, quick strides. "Listen, Nasanski. I will tell you something--about myself. Once upon a time I fell in love with a woman--oh, not here; no, in Moscow. I was then a mere stripling. Ah, well, she had no inkling of it, and it was enough for me to be allowed to sit near her when she sewed, and to draw quietly and imperceptibly, the threads towards me. That was all, and she noticed nothing; but it was enough to turn my head with joy."