"That's your look-out," said Ilya, jokingly. "Don't be glad on my account."
"Ah, brother," Pavel interrupted him, "it's all very well to joke! I had something very different in my mind when you stopped me. But never mind that."
They entered the first public house they came to, sat down in a corner and ordered some beer. Ilya saw in the lamp-light that Pavel's face was thin and sunken. His eyes had a restless look, and his lips, that so often before were half-open in gay mockery, were now pressed close together.
"In a printing works again," said Pavel, gloomily.
Ilya felt a vague pleasure to see Pashka, once so gay and assertive, now sad and careworn. He wanted to find out what had changed his friend, and, filling Pashka's glass, began to question him.
"I let it alone now. But I made a lot of poems a while ago. I showed them to the doctor, he praised them. He got one of them printed in a paper. I got thirty-nine kopecks for it."
"Oho!" cried Ilya. "That's something like! What sort of verses were they? Let's hear them!"
Ilya's eager curiosity and a couple of glasses of beer brought Gratschev into the right mood. His eyes shone and his yellow cheeks reddened. "What shall I say to you?" he said, rubbing his forehead. "I've forgotten it all; by God, I've forgotten it. Wait, perhaps something'll come back to me. I've always a head full of this sort of stuff, like a swarm of bees inside, humming. Often when I sit down to compose, I'm in a fever, something boils away in my soul and tears come into my eyes."
"I say! How does that happen?" asked Ilya, astonished and suspicious.
"Oh! something burns and blazes in you, and you want to express it cleverly and you can't find words, and then it makes you rage." He sighed, shook his head, and went on:
"Before it comes out, it seems tremendous, and when it's written down, it's nothing."
The more closely Ilya observed Pavel, the keener grew his curiosity, and following the curiosity another warm, friendly, and at the same time sorrowful feeling.
"Generally I make funny poems, about my own life," said Gratschev, and laughed constrainedly.
Gratschev looked round, coughed, rubbed his chest, and began to declaim hurriedly, in a dull voice, without looking at his friend: