and contented, and we need nothing more to make us happy. I love my work here. Ce n’est pas un pis-aller, on the contrary...”

Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations with Anna.

“Well, I will go on,” he said, collecting himself. “The great thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after