How I wished for it to die! I thought of the day when I should be without it as the day of liberation, of freedom.
That had become my idea, I must tell you, the dominating idea of my life: that I should kill my idealism, laugh at the belief in God, lose faith in every one and everything, and then simply enjoy myself--my work which I loved and my pleasure which I should love when my idealism had died....

Sometimes during those years I thought that it was dying.

Women helped to kill it, I believed, and I knew many women, desperately persistently laughing at them, leaving them or being left by them; and then, in spite of myself, bitterly, deeply disappointed.
Something always saying to me: 'I am God and you cannot hide from me.' 'I am God and I will not be hidden.' "And on this night, about five years ago, at the house of a friend, I met Andrey Vassilievitch.

We left the house together, and because it was a fine night, walked down the Nevski.

There at the corner of the Morskaia, because he was a nervous man who wished to be well with every one in the world and because he had nothing especial to say, he asked me to dinner, and I, because it was a fine night and there had been good wine, said that I would go.
"The next day I cursed my folly.