long wanted to speak openly to you. There’s no need to tell you—you are conscious of it yourself—that you are not an ordinary man; you are still young—all life is before you. What are you preparing yourself for? What future is awaiting you? I mean to say—what object do you want to attain? What are you going forward to? What is in your heart? in short, who are you? What are you?’

‘You surprise me, Anna Sergyevna. You are aware that I am studying natural science, and who I …’

‘Well, who are you?’

‘I have explained to you already that I am going to be a district doctor.’

Anna Sergyevna made a movement of impatience.

‘What do you say that for? You don’t believe it yourself. Arkady might answer me in that way, but not you.’

‘Why, in what is Arkady …’

‘Stop! Is it possible you could content yourself with such a humble career, and aren’t you always maintaining yourself that you don’t believe in medicine? You—with your ambition—a district doctor! You answer me like that to put me off, because you have no confidence in me. But, do you know, Yevgeny Vassilyitch, that I could understand you; I have been poor myself, and ambitious, like you; I have been perhaps through the same trials as you.’

‘That is all very well, Anna Sergyevna, but you must pardon me for … I am not in the habit of talking freely about myself at any time as a rule, and between you and me there is such a gulf …’

‘What sort of gulf? You mean to tell me again that I am an aristocrat? No more of that, Yevgeny Vassilyitch; I thought I had proved to you …’

‘And even apart from that,’ broke in Bazarov, ‘what could induce one to talk and think about the future, which for the most part does not depend on us? If a chance turns up of doing something—so much the better; and if it doesn’t turn up—at least one will be glad one didn’t gossip idly about it beforehand.’

‘You call a friendly conversation idle gossip?… Or perhaps you consider me as a woman unworthy of your confidence? I know you despise us all.’

‘I don’t despise you, Anna Sergyevna, and you know that.’

‘No, I don’t know anything … but let us suppose so. I understand your disinclination to talk of your future career; but as to what is taking place within you now …’

‘Taking place!’ repeated Bazarov, ‘as though I were some sort of government or society! In any case, it is utterly uninteresting; and besides, can a man always speak of everything that «takes place» in him?’

‘Why, I don’t see why you can’t speak freely of everything you have in your heart.’

‘Can you?’ asked Bazarov.

‘Yes,’ answered Anna Sergyevna, after a brief hesitation.

Bazarov bowed his head. ‘You are more fortunate than I am.’

Anna Sergyevna looked at him questioningly. ‘As you please,’ she went on, ‘but still something tells me that we have not come together for nothing; that we shall be great friends. I am sure this—what should I say, constraint, reticence in you will vanish at last.’

‘So you have noticed reticence … as you expressed it … constraint?’

‘Yes.’

Bazarov got up and went to the window. ‘And would you like to know the reason of this reticence? Would you like to know what is passing within me?’

‘Yes,’ repeated Madame Odintsov, with a sort of dread she did not at the time understand.

‘And you will not be angry?’

‘No.’

‘No?’ Bazarov was standing with his back to her. ‘Let me tell you then that I love you like a fool, like a madman…. There, you’ve forced it out of me.’

Madame Odintsov held both hands out before her; but Bazarov was leaning with his forehead pressed against the window pane. He breathed hard; his whole body was visibly trembling. But it was not the tremor of youthful timidity, not the sweet alarm of the first declaration that possessed him; it was passion struggling in him, strong and painful—passion not unlike hatred, and perhaps akin to it…. Madame Odintsov felt both afraid and sorry for him.

‘Yevgeny Vassilyitch!’ she said, and there was the ring of unconscious tenderness in her voice.

He turned quickly, flung a searching look on her, and snatching both her hands, he drew her suddenly to his breast.

She did not at once free herself from his embrace, but an instant later, she was standing far away in a corner, and looking from there at Bazarov. He rushed at her …

‘You have misunderstood me,’ she whispered hurriedly, in alarm. It seemed if he had made another step she would have screamed…. Bazarov bit his lips, and went out.

Half-an-hour after, a maid gave Anna Sergyevna a note from Bazarov; it consisted simply of one line: ‘Am I to go to-day, or can I stop till to-morrow?’

‘Why should you go? I did not understand you—you did not understand me,’ Anna Sergyevna answered him, but to herself she thought: ‘I did not understand myself either.’

She did not show herself till dinner-time, and kept walking to and fro in her room, stopping sometimes at the window, sometimes at the looking-glass, and slowly rubbing her handkerchief over her neck, on which she still seemed to feel a burning spot. She asked herself what had induced her to ‘force’ Bazarov’s words, his confidence, and whether she had suspected nothing … ‘I am to blame,’ she decided aloud, ‘but I could not have foreseen this.’ She fell to musing, and blushed crimson, remembering Bazarov’s almost animal face when he had rushed at her….

‘Oh?’ she uttered suddenly aloud, and she stopped short and shook back her curls…. She caught sight of herself in the glass; her head thrown back, with a mysterious smile on the half-closed, half-opened eyes and lips, told her, it seemed, in a flash something at which she herself was confused….

‘No,’ she made up her mind at last. ‘God knows what it would lead to; he couldn’t be played with; peace is anyway the best thing in the world.’

Her peace of mind was not shaken; but she felt gloomy, and even shed a few tears once though she could not have said why—certainly not for the insult done her. She did not feel insulted; she was more inclined to feel guilty. Under the influence of various vague emotions, the sense of life passing by, the desire of novelty, she had forced herself to go up to a certain point, forced herself to look behind herself, and had seen behind her not even an abyss, but what was empty … or revolting.

CHAPTER XIX

Great as was Madame Odintsov’s self-control, and superior as she was to every kind of prejudice, she felt awkward when she went into the dining-room to dinner. The meal went off fairly successfully, however. Porfiry Platonovitch made his appearance and told various anecdotes; he had just come back from the town. Among other things, he informed them that the governor had ordered his secretaries on special commissions to wear spurs, in case he might send them off anywhere for greater speed on horseback. Arkady talked in an undertone to Katya, and diplomatically attended to the princess’s wants. Bazarov maintained a grim and obstinate silence. Madame Odintsov looked at him twice, not stealthily, but straight in the face, which was bilious and forbidding, with downcast eyes, and contemptuous determination stamped on every feature, and thought: ‘No … no … no.’ … After dinner, she went with the whole company into the garden, and seeing that Bazarov wanted to speak to her, she took a few steps to one side and stopped. He went up to her, but even then did not raise his eyes, and said hoarsely—

‘I have to apologise to you, Anna Sergyevna. You must be in a fury with me.’

‘No, I’m not angry with you, Yevgeny Vassilyitch,’ answered Madame Odintsov; ‘but I am sorry.’

‘So much the worse. Any way, I’m sufficiently punished. My position, you will certainly agree, is most foolish. You wrote to me, «Why go away?» But I cannot stay, and don’t wish to. To-morrow I shall be gone.’

‘Yevgeny Vassilyitch, why are you …’

‘Why am I going away?’

‘No; I didn’t mean to say that.’

‘There’s no recalling the past, Anna Sergyevna … and this was bound to come about sooner or later. Consequently I must go. I can only conceive of one condition upon which I could remain; but that condition will never be. Excuse my impertinence, but you don’t love me, and you never will love me, I suppose?’

Bazarov’s eyes glittered for an instant under their dark brows.

Anna Sergyevna did not answer him. ‘I’m afraid of this man,’ flashed through her brain.

‘Good-bye, then,’ said Bazarov, as though he guessed her thought, and he went back into the house.

Anna Sergyevna walked slowly after him, and calling Katya to her, she took her arm. She did not leave her side till quite evening. She did not play cards, and was constantly laughing, which did not at all accord with her pale and perplexed face. Arkady was bewildered, and looked on at her as all young people look on—that’s to say, he was constantly asking himself, ‘What is the meaning of that?’ Bazarov shut himself up in his room; he came back to tea, however. Anna Sergyevna longed to say some friendly word to him, but she did not know how to address him….

An unexpected incident relieved her from her embarrassment; a steward announced the arrival of Sitnikov.

It is difficult to do justice in words to the strange figure cut by the young apostle of progress as he fluttered into the room. Though, with his characteristic impudence, he had made