Page:Oblomov (1915 English translation).djvu/185

Rh able to smile. To me such love is life, and life is"

"Yes?"

"Is a duty, an obligation. Consequently love also is a duty. God has sent me that duty, and has bid me perform it." As she spoke she raised her eyes to heaven.

"Who can have inspired her with these ideas?" Oblomov thought to himself. "Neither through experience nor through trial nor through 'fire and smoke' can she have attained this clear, simple conception of life and of love."

"Then, since there is joy in life, is there also suffering?" he asked aloud.

"I do not know," she replied. "That lies beyond my experience as much as it lies beyond my understanding."

"But how well I understand it!"

"Ah!" she said merrily. "What glances you throw at me sometimes! Even my aunt has noticed it."

"But how can there be joy in love if it never brings one moments of ecstatic delight?"

"What?" she replied with a glance at the scene around her. "Is not all this so much ecstatic delight?" She looked at him, smiled, and gave him her hand. "Do you