Before going to bed I went into the corridor to get a drink of water.  When I came back my companion was standing in the middle of the room, and he looked at me with a scared expression.  His face looked a greyish white, and there were drops of perspiration on his forehead.

“My nerves are in an awful state,” he muttered with a sickly smile,” awful I It’s acute psychological disturbance.  But that’s of no consequence.”

And he began reasoning again that the New Testament was a natural continuation of the Old, that Judaism has outlived its day. . . .  Picking out his phrases, he seemed to be trying to put together the forces of his conviction and to smother with them the uneasiness of his soul, and to prove to himself that in giving up the religion of his fathers he had done nothing dreadful or peculiar, but had acted as a thinking man free from prejudice, and that therefore he could boldly remain in a room all alone with his conscience.  He was trying to convince himself, and with his eyes besought my assistance.

Meanwhile a big clumsy wick had burned up on our tallow candle.  It was by now getting light.  At the gloomy little window, which was turning blue, we could distinctly see both banks of the Donets River and the oak copse beyond the river.  It was time to s sleep.

“It will be very interesting here to-morrow,” said my companion when I put out the candle and went to bed.  “After early mass, the procession will go in boats from the Monastery to the Hermitage.”

Raising his right eyebrow and putting his head on one side, he prayed before the ikons, and, without undressing, lay down on his little sofa.

“Yes,” he said, turning over on the other side.

“Why yes?” I asked.

“When I accepted orthodoxy in Novotcherkassk my mother was looking for me in Rostov.  She felt that I meant to change my religion,” he sighed, and went on:  “It is six years since I was there in the province of Mogilev.  My sister must be married by now.”

After a short silence, seeing that I was still awake, he began talking quietly of how they soon, thank God, would give him a job, and that at last he would have a home of his own, a settled position, his daily bread secure. . . .  And I was thinking that this man would never have a home of his own, nor a settled position, nor his daily bread secure.  He dreamed aloud of a village school as of the Promised Land; like the majority of people, he had a prejudice against a wandering life, and regarded it as something exceptional, abnormal and accidental, like an illness, and was looking for salvation in ordinary workaday life.  The tone of his voice betrayed that he was conscious of his abnormal position and regretted it.  He seemed as it were apologizing and justifying himself.