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A VITAL QUESTION.

freedom. On the third day the "cellar," as she called it, seemed twice as intolerable as before; on the fourth day she wept, which was contrary to her liking, but she did not weep much; on the fifth day she wept more; on the sixth day she did not weep at all, but she could not sleep from sorrow.

Lopukhóf looked on, then he spoke the monologue beginning "Hm! hm!" He looked a second time and spoke the monologue "Hm! hm! da, hm!" At the first monologue he had a dim suggestion of an idea, but he was not sure what it was; at the second monologue he saw plainly in his mind what he imagined at the first. "It does not do to offer a person freedom and then leave him in prison." After that he thought steadily for two hours,—an hour and a half on his way from Semyonovsky bridge to Vuiborgsky, and half an hour on his sofa. The first quarter of an hour he thought without wrinkling his forehead; the remaining hour and three quarters he wrinkled his forehead; at the end of the two hours he struck his forehead, and using worse words than Gogol's postmaster Telyatin (the calf), looked at his watch, and saying, "Ten o'clock, yes, there is time yet" left the room.

During the first quarter of an hour, when his brow was smooth, this was what he thought, "It's all nonsense; why should I graduate? I shall not be ruined if I don't get a diploma, and it is not necessary. By lessons and translations I shall not make less; I shall make even more than if I had become a doctor; bagatelles!"

Consequently there was no need of wrinkling his brow; to tell the truth, the task did not appear to be of a head-splitting nature, partly because that from the first lesson he had anticipated something in the nature of his present resolution. He now perceived this. And if any one had reminded him of his arguments that began with the theme 'sacrifice' and ended with the thought of fine dresses, one might have proved to him that something in the nature of these circumstances was anticipated from that very time, because otherwise there would be no sense in the words "to renounce my scientific career." At that time it seemed to him that he was not going to renounce it, but instinct was already saying, "Renounce it; there will be no postponement!" And if any one had proved to Lopukhóf, as to a practical thinker, that there was no ground then for his renunciation, he would have triumphed as a theoretical man, and would have said: "Now here is a new example for you of how egotism rules our