Volodya

“ Volodya thought with vexation as he got into bed. "But never mind; I'll wait till to-morrow . . . to-morrow in the arbour. It doesn't matter. . . ."
He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and thinking. All thought of the examination was hateful to him. He had already made up his mind that they would expel him, and that there was nothing terrible about his being expelled. ”

“ The top button of her blouse was undone, so that the boy saw her throat and bosom.
"Why don't you say something?" said Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down. "It's not polite to be silent when a lady talks to you. What a clumsy seal you are though, Volodya! You always sit, saying nothing, thinking like some philosopher. There's not a spark of life or fire in you! ”

“ The boiling water, sputtering, ran from the tap into his mother’s cup.
A light shadow was cast by the little spoon upon the saucer and the tablecloth, and it lost itself in the glass of tea. Volodya watched it intently: the shadows thrown by the tiny little eddies and bubbles recalled something to him—precisely what, Volodya could not say. He held up and he turned the little spoon, and he ran his fingers over it—but nothing came of it.
“All the same,” he stubbornly insisted to himself, “it’s not with fingers alone that shadows can be made. They are possible with anything. ”

“ A week later Volodya threw her over. And after that life went on as before, uninteresting, miserable, and sometimes even agonising. The Colonel and Volodya spent hours playing billiards and picquet, Rita told anecdotes in the same languid, tasteless way, and Sofya Lvovna went about alone in hired sledges and kept begging her husband to take her for a good drive with three horses.
Going almost every day to the nunnery, she wearied Olga, complaining of her unbearable misery, weeping, and feeling as she did so that she brought with her into the cell something impure, pitiful, shabby. ”

“ Vlang alone could not control himself; he dodged and ducked just as before, and Vasin lost some of his composure, and fussed and fidgeted and changed his place incessantly.
But Volodya was in an extraordinary state of enthusiasm; the thought of danger did not even occur to him. Delight that he was fulfilling his duty, that he was not only not a coward, but even a valiant fellow, the feeling that he was in command, and the presence of twenty men, who, as he was aware, were surveying him with curiosity, made a thoroughly brave man of him. ”

“ At four o'clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless night, the prospect of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience--all roused in him now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He looked at maman's sharp profile, at her little nose, and at the raincoat which was a present from Nyuta, and muttered:
"Why do you powder? It's not becoming at your age! You make yourself up, don't pay your debts at cards, smoke other people's tobacco . ”

“ If the little vagabonds are hungry, poor Volodya, who himself is without love or caresses, suffers still more, but every time that he brings the children some apples or cakes he feels that he is less unhappy, because these offerings are accepted with such an outpouring of gratitude. Gradually, the little lad gets to know all the inhabitants, and becomes especially intimate with Maroussya, whose eyes have an expression of precocious desolation. ”

“ The same thing happened at the third and the fourth windows; the shadows fell in the class-room on the ceiling, and in the degree that the passer-by moved forward they retreated backward.
“This,” thought Volodya, “is not at all the same as in an open place, where the shadow follows the man; when the man goes forward, the shadow glides behind, and other shadows again meet him in the front.”
Volodya turned his eyes on the gaunt figure of the tutor. His callous, yellow face annoyed Volodya. He looked for his shadow and found it on the wall, just behind the tutor’s chair. ”

“ The music teacher was comforting maman in the next room. "He is young! Young people of his age never restrain themselves. One must resign oneself to that."
"No, Yevgenya Andreyevna; he's too spoilt," said maman in a singsong voice. "He has no one in authority over him, and I am weak and can do nothing. Oh, I am unhappy!"
Volodya put the muzzle of the revolver to his mouth, felt something like a trigger or spring, and pressed it with his finger. ”

“ Sofya Lvovna's father was an army doctor, and had at one time served in the same regiment with Colonel Yagitch. Volodya's father was an army doctor too, and he, too, had once been in the same regiment as her father and Colonel Yagitch. In spite of many amatory adventures, often very complicated and disturbing, Volodya had done splendidly at the university, and had taken a very good degree. Now he was specialising in foreign literature, and was said to be writing a thesis. He lived with his father, the army doctor, in the barracks, and had no means of his own, though he was thirty. ”

“ Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced at Nyuta's laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting behind her back. He held her round the waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to her head, showing the dimples in her elbows, she set her hair straight under the kerchief and said in a calm voice:
"You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that under feminine influence. ”

“ You are really horrid! . . . At your age you ought to be living, skipping, and jumping, chattering, flirting, falling in love."
Volodya looked at the sheet that was held by a plump white hand, and thought. . . .
"He's mute," said Nyuta, with wonder; "it is strange, really. . . . Listen! ”

“ She smiled and followed Volodya.
“Mamma, I’ve thought of a new figure,” said Volodya excitedly, as he placed the lamp in the desired position. “Look.... Do you see? This is the steppe, covered with snow, and the snow falls—a regular storm.”
Volodya raised his hands and arranged them.
“Now look, here is an old man, a wayfarer. He is up to his knees in snow. It is difficult to walk. He is alone. It is an open field. The village is far away. He is tired, he is cold; it is terrible. He is all bent—he’s such an old man.”
Volodya’s mother helped him with his fingers. ”

“ He tried to persuade her, said rude things, but she--a frivolous, pampered woman, who had run through two fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her time, and always gravitated towards acquaintances of high rank--did not understand him, and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he hated.
In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling which was absolutely new to him. . . . ”

“ How extraordinary it was, strange, yes, touching to see the old lady (they had been neighbours ever so many years) move away from the window, as if she were attached to that sound, that string. Gigantic as it was, it had something to do with her. Down, down, into the midst of ordinary things the finger fell, making the moment solemn. She was forced, so Clarissa imagined, by that sound, to move, to go—but where? Clarissa tried to follow her as she turned and disappeared, and could still just see her white cap moving at the back of the bedroom. ”

“ "Yes, he's a glorious fighter," said Bulba, pausing; "by God! that was a good one!" he continued, somewhat as though he were excusing himself; "yes, although he has never tried his hand at it before. He'll make a good kazák! Now, welcome, my lad, let's greet each other;" and father and son began to exchange kisses. "Good, little son! see that you thrash every one else as you have thrashed me; don't you knuckle under to any one. All the same, your outfit is ridiculous—What's this rope hanging here?—And you, you clumsy lout, why are you standing there with your arms dangling?" ”

“ Mrs Dalloway raised her hand to her eyes, and, as the maid shut the door to, and she heard the swish of Lucy’s skirts, she felt like a nun who has left the world and feels fold round her the familiar veils and the response to old devotions. ”

“ thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan. I said it; did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now.... But, wherefore dost thou not look at me, Jokanaan? Thine eyes that were so terrible, so full of rage and scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut? Open thine eyes! Lift up thine eyelids, Jokanaan! Wherefore dost thou not look at me? Art thou afraid of me, Jokanaan, that thou wilt not look at me?... ”

“ The statuette, idol, fetish, or whatever it was, had been captured some months before in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting; and so singular and hideous were the rites connected with it, that the police could not but realize that they had stumbled on a dark cult totally unknown to them, and infinitely more diabolic than even the blackest of the African voodoo circles. Of its origin, apart from the erratic and unbelievable tales extorted from the captured members, absolutely nothing was to be discovered; ”

“ Ah, Jokanaan, thou wert the man that I loved alone among men. All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! ”

“ Straightening himself and stealthily fingering his pocket-knife he started after her to follow this woman, this excitement, which seemed even with its back turned to shed on him a light which connected them, which singled him out, as if the random uproar of the traffic had whispered through hollowed hands his name, not Peter, but his private name which he called himself in his own thoughts. ”

“ To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka--a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman--a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. ”

“ ‘Beautiful!’ she would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him—he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily ”

“ With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta’s arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past. ”

“ She had a right to his arm, though it was without feeling. He would give her, who was so simple, so impulsive, only twenty-four, without friends in England, who had left Italy for his sake, a piece of bone. ”

“ And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which (as she dozed there) became hazy with the sound of bells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spider’s thread is blotted with raindrops, and, burdened, sags down. So she slept.
And Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread hesitated at the corner of Conduit Street at the very moment that Millicent Bruton, lying on the sofa, let the thread snap; ”

“ “Love one another, Fathers,” said Father Zossima, as far as Alyosha could remember afterwards. “Love God's people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth.... And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognize that. Else he would have had no reason to come here. ”

“ “My dear Vogelstein, she’s the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She’s the self-made girl!” ”

“ Let us not expect Russia to do what she is incapable of, to restrict herself within certain limits, to concentrate her attention upon one point, or bring her conception of life down to one doctrine. Her literary productions must reflect the moral chaos which she is passing through. ”

“ She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway. ”