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RUDIN fell in love in those days with a very pretty young girl. But why do you look at me like that? I could tell you something about myself a great deal more extraordinary than that!’

‘And what is that something, if I may know?’

‘Oh, just this. In those Moscow days I used to have a tryst at nights—with whom, would you imagine? with a young lime-tree at the bottom of my garden. I used to embrace its slender and graceful trunk, and I felt as though I were embracing all nature, and my heart melted and expanded as though it really were taking in the whole of nature. That’s what I was then. And do you think, perhaps, I didn’t write verses? Why, I even composed a whole drama in imitation of Manfred. Among the characters was a ghost with blood on his breast, and not his own blood, observe, but the blood of all humanity. Yes, yes, you need not wonder at that. But I was beginning to tell you about my love affair. I made the acquaintance of a girl’

‘And you gave up your trysts with the lime-tree?’ inquired Alexandra Pavlovna.

‘Yes; I gave them up. This girl was a 124