like that for?’ thought Pavel Petrovitch, when he was left alone. ‘As though it did not depend on him! I will go away directly he is married, somewhere a long way off—to Dresden or Florence, and will live there till I——’

Pavel Petrovitch moistened his forehead with eau de cologne, and closed his eyes. His beautiful, emaciated head, the glaring daylight shining full upon it, lay on the white pillow like the head of a dead man…. And indeed he was a dead man.

CHAPTER XXV

At Nikolskoe Katya and Arkady were sitting in the garden on a turf seat in the shade of a tall ash tree; Fifi had placed himself on the ground near them, giving his slender body that graceful curve, which is known among dog-fanciers as ‘the hare bend.’ Both Arkady and Katya were silent; he was holding a half-open book in his hands, while she was picking out of a basket the few crumbs of bread left in it, and throwing them to a small family of sparrows, who with the frightened impudence peculiar to them were hopping and chirping at her very feet. A faint breeze stirring in the ash leaves kept slowly moving pale-gold flecks of sunlight up and down over the path and Fifi’s tawny back; a patch of unbroken shade fell upon Arkady and Katya; only from time to time a bright streak gleamed on her hair. Both were silent, but the very way in which they were silent, in which they were sitting together, was expressive of confidential intimacy; each of them seemed not even to be thinking of his companion, while secretly rejoicing in his presence. Their faces, too, had changed since we saw them last; Arkady looked more tranquil, Katya brighter and more daring.

‘Don’t you think,’ began Arkady, ‘that the ash has been very well named in Russian yasen; no other tree is so lightly and brightly transparent (yasno) against the air as it is.’

Katya raised her eyes to look upward, and assented, ‘Yes’; while Arkady thought, ‘Well, she does not reproach me for talking finely.’

‘I don’t like Heine,’ said Katya, glancing towards the book which Arkady was holding in his hands, ‘either when he laughs or when he weeps; I like him when he’s thoughtful and melancholy.’

‘And I like him when he laughs,’ remarked Arkady.

‘That’s the relics left in you of your old satirical tendencies.’ (‘Relics!’ thought Arkady—’if Bazarov had heard that?’) ‘Wait a little; we shall transform you.’

‘Who will transform me? You?’

‘Who?—my sister; Porfiry Platonovitch, whom you’ve given up quarrelling with; auntie, whom you escorted to church the day before yesterday.’

‘Well, I couldn’t refuse! And as for Anna Sergyevna, she agreed with Yevgeny in a great many things, you remember?’

‘My sister was under his influence then, just as you were.’

‘As I was? Do you discover, may I ask, that I’ve shaken off his influence now?’

Katya did not speak.

‘I know,’ pursued Arkady, ‘you never liked him.’

‘I can have no opinion about him.’

‘Do you know, Katerina Sergyevna, every time I hear that answer I disbelieve it…. There is no man that every one of us could not have an opinion about! That’s simply a way of getting out of it.’

‘Well, I’ll say, then, I don’t…. It’s not exactly that I don’t like him, but I feel that he’s of a different order from me, and I am different from him … and you too are different from him.’

‘How’s that?’

‘How can I tell you…. He’s a wild animal, and you and I are tame.’

‘Am I tame too?’

Katya nodded.

Arkady scratched his ear. ‘Let me tell you, Katerina Sergyevna, do you know, that’s really an insult?’

‘Why, would you like to be a wild——’

‘Not wild, but strong, full of force.’

‘It’s no good wishing for that…. Your friend, you see, doesn’t wish for it, but he has it.’

‘Hm! So you imagine he had a great influence on Anna Sergyevna?’

‘Yes. But no one can keep the upper hand of her for long,’ added Katya in a low voice.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘She’s very proud…. I didn’t mean that … she values her independence a great deal.’

‘Who doesn’t value it?’ asked Arkady, and the thought flashed through his mind, ‘What good is it?’ ‘What good is it?’ it occurred to Katya to wonder too. When young people are often together on friendly terms, they are constantly stumbling on the same ideas.

Arkady smiled, and, coming slightly closer to Katya, he said in a whisper, ‘Confess that you are a little afraid of her.’

‘Of whom?’

‘Her,’ repeated Arkady significantly.

‘And how about you?’ Katya asked in her turn.

‘I am too, observe I said, I am too.’

Katya threatened him with her finger. ‘I wonder at that,’ she began; ‘my sister has never felt so friendly to you as just now; much more so than when you first came.’

‘Really!’

‘Why, haven’t you noticed it? Aren’t you glad of it?’

Arkady grew thoughtful.

‘How have I succeeded in gaining Anna Sergyevna’s good opinion? Wasn’t it because I brought her your mother’s letters?’

‘Both that and other causes, which I shan’t tell you.’

‘Why?’

‘I shan’t say.’

‘Oh! I know; you’re very obstinate.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘And observant.’

Katya gave Arkady a sidelong look. ‘Perhaps so; does that irritate you? What are you thinking of?’

‘I am wondering how you have come to be as observant as in fact you are. You are so shy so reserved; you keep every one at a distance.’

‘I have lived a great deal alone; that drives one to reflection. But do I really keep every one at a distance?’

Arkady flung a grateful glance at Katya.

‘That’s all very well,’ he pursued; ‘but people in your position—I mean in your circumstances—don’t often have that faculty; it is hard for them, as it is for sovereigns, to get at the truth.’

‘But, you see, I am not rich.’

Arkady was taken aback, and did not at once understand Katya. ‘Why, of course, the property’s all her sister’s!’ struck him suddenly; the thought was not unpleasing to him. ‘How nicely you said that!’ he commented.

‘What?’

‘You said it nicely, simply, without being ashamed or making a boast of it. By the way, I imagine there must always be something special, a kind of pride of a sort in the feeling of any man, who knows and says he is poor.’

‘I have never experienced anything of that sort, thanks to my sister. I only referred to my position just now because it happened to come up.’

‘Well; but you must own you have a share of that pride I spoke of just now.’

‘For instance?’

‘For instance, you—forgive the question—you wouldn’t marry a rich man, I fancy, would you?’

‘If I loved him very much…. No, I think even then I wouldn’t marry him.’

‘There! you see!’ cried Arkady, and after a short pause he added, ‘And why wouldn’t you marry him?’

‘Because even in the ballads unequal matches are always unlucky.’

‘You want to rule, perhaps, or …’

‘Oh, no! why should I? On the contrary, I am ready to obey; only inequality is intolerable. To respect one’s self and obey, that I can understand, that’s happiness; but a subordinate existence … No, I’ve had enough of that as it is.’

‘Enough of that as it is,’ Arkady repeated after Katya. ‘Yes, yes,’ he went on, ‘you’re not Anna Sergyevna’s sister for nothing; you’re just as independent as she is; but you’re more reserved. I’m certain you wouldn’t be the first to give expression to your feeling, however strong and holy it might be …’

‘Well, what would you expect?’ asked Katya.

‘You’re equally clever; and you’ve as much, if not more, character than she.’

‘Don’t compare me with my sister, please,’ interposed Katya hurriedly; ‘that’s too much to my disadvantage. You seem to forget my sister’s beautiful and clever, and … you in particular, Arkady Nikolaevitch, ought not to say such things, and with such a serious face too.’

‘What do you mean by «you in particular»—and what makes you suppose I am joking?’

‘Of course, you are joking.’

‘You think so? But what if I’m persuaded of what I say? If I believe I have not put it strongly enough even?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Really? Well, now I see; I certainly took you to be more observant than you are.’

‘How?’

Arkady made no answer, and turned away, while Katya looked for a few more crumbs in the basket, and began throwing them to the sparrows; but she moved her arm too vigorously, and they flew away, without stopping to pick them up.

‘Katerina Sergyevna!’ began Arkady suddenly; ‘it’s of no consequence to you, probably; but, let me tell you, I put you not only above your sister, but above every one in the world.’

He got up and went quickly away, as though he were frightened at the words that had fallen from his lips.

Katya let her two hands drop together with the basket on to her lap, and with bent head she stared a long while after Arkady. Gradually a crimson flush came faintly out upon her cheeks; but her lips did not smile and her dark eyes had a look of perplexity and some other, as yet undefined, feeling.

‘Are you alone?’ she heard the voice of Anna Sergyevna near her; ‘I thought you came into the garden with Arkady.’

Katya slowly raised her eyes to her sister (elegantly, even elaborately dressed, she was standing in the path and tickling Fifi’s ears with the tip of her open parasol), and slowly replied, ‘Yes, I’m alone.’

‘So I see,’ she answered with a smile; ‘I suppose he has gone to his room.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you been reading together?’

‘Yes.’

Anna Sergyevna took Katya by the chin and lifted her face up.

‘You have not been quarrelling, I hope?’

‘No,’ said Katya, and she quietly removed her sister’s hand.

‘How solemnly you answer! I expected