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 "I blushed and trembled like this, and I felt that all was lost, when I got one in physics, and had to go into the second class; and I thought myself irretrievably ruined when I bungled in my sister's affairs, which were confided to me. And now? Now the years have gone by, and I look back and wonder how it could disturb my mind. It will be just the same with my disappointment this time. Time will pass, and I shall grow callous."

But three months passed away and the callousness did not come, and it was as painful for him to remember it as on the first day. He could not reconcile himself to the fact that, after dreaming so long of family life, after being, as he thought, so well prepared for it, not only was he not married, but found himself farther than ever from marriage. He felt painfully, as all those around him felt, that it is not good for a man of his age to live alone. He remembered that before his departure for Moscow he had once said to his cowherd, Nikolaï, a simple-hearted muzhik with whom he liked to talk:—

"Do you know, Nikolaï, I am thinking of getting married?" whereupon Nikolaï had instantly replied, as if there could not be the slightest doubt about it:—

"This ought to have been long ago, Konstantin Dmitritch."

And now marriage was farther off than ever. The place was taken; and when, exercising his imagination, he put into that place some young girl of his acquaintance, he felt that it was perfectly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of how Kitty refused him and of the part which he played still tormented him with mortification. It was idle to say that he was not to blame in this; this recollection, taken together with other mortifying experiences of the same sort, made him quiver and grow red in the face. He had on his conscience, as every man has, the remembrance of evil deeds for which he should have repented; but the remembrance of these evil deeds did not trouble him nearly so much as the feeling of his humiliation, slight as it really was. It was a wound that refused to heal. He could not keep out