She was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things.

When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do not yet know.

There will be time enough to think about love when I want to, but now I have no time.

" Besides, it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood.

He went to balls and into ladies' society with an affectation of doing so against his will.