“Yes, possibly. I was promised it; but that would be another two years, and it is very doubtful. And does anyone realize what two such years mean? Just imagine the life with this Paul Dmitrich: gambling, rough jokes, dissipation.⁠ ⁠… You want to speak out about something that has risen in your soul, but you are not understood, or you are laughed at. They talk to you not to communicate their thoughts, but to make a fool of you if possible. And it’s all so vulgar, coarse, horrid; and all the time you feel you are a private⁠—they always make you feel that. That is why you can’t imagine what a pleasure it is to talk à cœur ouvert 105 to a man like you!”

I could not imagine what sort of a man I was supposed to be, and therefore did not know how to reply to him.

“Will you have supper?” at this moment asked Nikita, who had approached unseen in the darkness, and who, I noticed, was not pleased at the presence of my visitor: “there’s nothing but dumplings and a little beef left.”