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Rh I tried to find pleasure in the new life which stood before me; I tried to believe in the endearing words with which Theodor Ivanovich enticed me to him; I tried not to perceive the contempt with which the other children received me, because I was smaller than they; I tried to think that it was a shame for a big boy to go on living with little girls, and there was no good at all in the life upstairs with my nurse; but at heart I was frightfully miserable, and I knew that I had lost beyond recall innocence and happiness, and only the feeling of my own dignity, the consciousness that I was doing my duty, sustained me.

“Many times, subsequently, in the course of my life it has been my lot to experience such moments at the turning-points of life as I turned into fresh paths. I have experienced a silent misery at irreparable losses. Whatever they may have said to me about going down to the other children, the chief thing I remember is the khalat with the strap sewn on to the back, which they put on me so as to separate me for ever from the life upstairs, and then for the first time I observed not all those with whom I had lived upstairs hitherto, but the chief person with whom I lived and whom I did not remember before. This was my aunt, T. A. I remember her as a smallish, stout, dark-haired, kind, fresh, compassionate person. She dressed me in my khalat, fitted it round me, fastened my belt, and kissed me, and I saw that she felt the same thing as I did; she felt that it was sad, terribly sad, but