It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep into.

To put himself in thought and feeling in another person's place was a spiritual exercise not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch.

He looked on this spiritual exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.

"And the worst of it all," thought he, "is that just now, at the very moment when my great work is approaching completion" (he was thinking of the project he was bringing forward at the time), "when I stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid worry should fall foul of me.