know that you love her, and that she loves you. Here are a thousand roubles for you. Marry her, and may God grant you both happiness!’ Then I shall leave them together.”

Among the countless thoughts and fancies which pass, without logic or sequence, through the mind and the imagination, there are always some which leave behind them a mark so profound that, without remembering their exact subject, we can at least recall that something good has passed through our brain, and try to retain and reproduce its effect. Such was the mark left upon my consciousness by the idea of sacrificing my feelings to Masha’s happiness, seeing that she believed that she could attain it only through a union with Basil.