“Well,” sighed my father, taking off his spectacles, and laying them on the table. “What thou sowest that shalt thou reap. What thou sowest,” he repeated, getting up from the table, “that shalt thou reap. I ask you to remember how you came to me two years ago, and on this very spot I begged you, I besought you to give up your errors; I reminded you of your duty, of your honour, of what you owed to your forefathers whose traditions we ought to preserve as sacred. Did you obey me? You scorned my counsels, and obstinately persisted in clinging to your false ideals; worse still you drew your sister into the path of error with you, and led her to lose her moral principles and sense of shame. Now you are both in a bad way. Well, as thou sowest, so shalt thou reap!”

As he said this he walked up and down the room. He probably imagined that I had come to him to confess my wrong doings, and he probably expected that I should begin begging him to forgive my sister and me. I was cold, I was shivering as though I were in a fever, and spoke with difficulty in a husky voice.

“And I beg you, too, to remember,” I said, “on this very spot I besought you to understand me, to reflect, to decide with me how and for what we should live, and in answer you began talking about our forefathers, about my grandfather who wrote poems. One tells you now that your only daughter is hopelessly ill, and you go on again about your forefathers, your traditions.… And such frivolity in your old age, when death is close at hand, and you haven’t more than five or ten years left!”

“What have you come here for?” my father asked sternly, evidently offended at my reproaching him for his frivolity.

“I don’t know. I love you, I am unutterably sorry that we are so far apart—so you see I have come. I love you still, but my sister has broken with you completely. She does not forgive you, and will never forgive you now. Your very name arouses her aversion for the past, for life.”

“And who is to blame for it?” cried my father. “It’s your fault, you scoundrel!”