I don't need it." "Pshaw, how stupid you are, bad, disgusting!" said the girl with contempt and went away, leaving him alone in the garden.

Offended and gloomy, he looked after her, moved his eyebrows and lowering his head, slowly walked off into the depth of the garden.
He already began to recognise the beauty of solitude and the sweet poison of contemplation.

Oftentimes, during summer evenings, when everything was coloured by the fiery tints of sunset, kindling the imagination, an uneasy longing for something incomprehensible penetrated his breast.

Sitting somewhere in a dark corner of the garden or lying in bed, he conjured up before him the images of the fairy-tale princesses--they appeared with the face of Luba and of other young ladies of his acquaintance, noiselessly floating before him in the twilight and staring into his eyes with enigmatic looks.

At times these visions awakened in him a mighty energy, as though intoxicating him--he would rise and, straightening his shoulders, inhale the perfumed air with a full chest; but sometimes these same visions brought to him a feeling of sadness--he felt like crying, but ashamed of shedding tears, he restrained himself and never wept in silence.