Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/69

 soul after he accepted Tolstoy's teaching. Leo Nicolayevitch leant over and said to me in a low voice: "He's lying all the time, the rogue, but he does it to please me. . . ."

Many tried to please him, but I did not observe that they did it well or with any skill. He rarely spoke to me on his usual subjects of universal forgiveness, loving one's neighbour, the Gospels, and Buddhism, evidently because he realized at once that all that would not "go down" with me. I greatly appreciated this.

When he liked he could be extraordinarily charming, sensitive, and tactful; his talk was fascinatingly simple and elegant, but sometimes it was painfully unpleasant to listen to him. I always disliked what he said about women—it was unspeakably "vulgar," and there was in his words something artificial, insincere, and at the same time very personal. It seemed as if he had once been hurt, and could neither forget nor forgive. The evening when I first got to know him, he took me into his study—it was at Khamovniki in Moscow—and, making me sit opposite to him, began to talk about Varienka Oliessova and of Twenty-Six and One. I was overwhelmed by his tone and lost my head, he spoke so plainly and brutally, arguing that in a healthy girl chastity is not natural. "If a girl who has turned fifteen is healthy, she desires to be touched and embraced. Her mind is still afraid of the unknown and of what she does not understand—that is what they call chastity and purity. But