The Ninth Net
An honest, good person finds it much harder to cause someone grief, than to suffer themselves. The wronged person has the compassion and support of others. While the wrongdoer has nothing apart from the pangs of conscience and self-admonishment.
Right up until the spring Hryhoriy punished himself with the pain he had inflicted on the good, dear people left behind in distant Valky, who suffered now because of him. He now lived near Kharkiv in the monastery’s cottage where seven years earlier his compatriot Nychypir had taken refuge. Rather, he did not live, but slowly smouldered on a fire of self‑expiation. By the end of winter, he had dried up and turned yellow, like a debarked oak log. The cowherds, who shared their bread and squalid lodgings with him in the small cramped
