Looking upwards, Sina could watch the swift procession of the clouds. She thought of Yourii and of her love. Her mood, if pleasurably pensive, was yet a little sad. It was so good to rest there, exposed to the cool night wind, and listen with all her heart to the voice of one man which to her ears sounded clearer and more masterful than the rest. Meanwhile the din grew greater, and it was evident that each person thought himself more cultivated and intelligent than his neighbours and was striving to convert them. Matters at last became so unpleasant that the most peaceable among them lost their tempers.
“If you judge like that,” shouted Yourii, his eyes flashing, for he was anxious not to yield in the presence of Sina, though she could only hear his voice, “then we must go back to the origin of all ideas….”
“What ought we, then, in your opinion to read?” said the hostile Goschienko.
“What you ought to read? Why, Confucius, the Gospels, Ecclesiastes …”
“The Psalms and the Apocrypha,” was the Polytechnic student’s mocking interruption.
Goschienko laughed maliciously, oblivious of the fact himself had never read one of these works.
“Of what good would that be?” asked Schafroff in a tone of disappointment.
“It’s like they do in church!” tittered Pistzoff.
“I am not joking. If you wish to be logical, then …”
“Ah! but what did you say to me just now about Christ?” cried Von Deitz exultantly.
“What did I say?…If one wishes to study life, and to form some definite conception of the mutual relationship of man to man, surely the best way is to get a thorough knowledge of the Titanic work of those who, representing the best models of humanity, devoted their lives to the solution of the simplest and most complex problems with regard to human relationships.”
“There I don’t agree with you,” retorted Goschienko.
Once more all was confusion and senseless uproar, during which it was impossible to hear either the beginning or the end of any utterance.
Reduced to silence by this war of words, Soloveitchik sat in a corner and listened. At first the expression on his face was one of intense, almost childish interest, but after a while his doubt and distress were shown by lines at the corners of his mouth and of his eyes.