"I dare say you are right," I answered, somewhat absently, "but has it never occurred to you that it is easy to make the mistake of judging the suffering of others by our own standards instead of by their real feelings? It seems to be assumed nowadays that all men are born with the same sensibilities, yet nothing could be farther from the truth."
Dr. Polnitzski did not reply for a moment. He seemed this evening to be unusually restless. He walked about the room, getting up as soon as he sat down, and made impulsive movements which apparently betrayed some inward disturbance.
"Of course you are right," he said at length, in an absent manner. "The classes not bred to sensitiveness cannot have the real sensibility--"
He broke off abruptly and came across to my couch.
"We were talking," he began, with a sudden, bitter vehemence which startled me, "of real suffering. See! I have lived here silent in an alien land for long years; but to-day--to-day is an anniversary, and I have somehow lost the power to be silent any longer. If you care to listen, I will tell you what I mean by suffering; I will tell you what life has been to me."
"If you will," I responded, "I will try to understand."
He seemed hardly to hear or to heed my words, but, walking up and down the chamber, he began at once, speaking with the outbursting eagerness of a man who has restrained himself long.
"My father," he said, "was one of the small nobles in the neighborhood of Moscow. I was his only son, and when he died, in my seventeenth year, I had been his companion so much that I was as mature as most lads half a dozen years older. My mother was a gentle, good woman. I loved my mother, but she made little difference in my life. She was kind to me and she prayed for me a good deal. She thought her prayers answered when I grew up without debauchery. She may have been right; but I have lived to think that there are worse things than debauchery."
He paused a moment, and then went on, looking downward.
"Once the little mother was frightened," he went on again, with a strange mingling of bitterness and tenderness in his tone. "There was a girl, the daughter of the steward; her name was Alexandrina."
His voice as he pronounced the stately name was full of feeling. He seemed to have forgotten me, and to be telling his story to an unseen hearer.