to find him here, and meant to suggest his coming a walk with me. That’s what he is always asking for. They have sent you some shoes from the town; go and try them on; I noticed only yesterday your old ones are quite shabby. You never think enough about it, and you have such charming little feet! Your hands are nice too … though they’re large; so you must make the most of your little feet. But you’re not vain.’

Anna Sergyevna went farther along the path with a light rustle of her beautiful gown; Katya got up from the grass, and, taking Heine with her, went away too—but not to try on her shoes.

‘Charming little feet!’ she thought, as she slowly and lightly mounted the stone steps of the terrace, which were burning with the heat of the sun; ‘charming little feet you call them…. Well, he shall be at them.’

But all at once a feeling of shame came upon her, and she ran swiftly upstairs.

Arkady had gone along the corridor to his room; a steward had overtaken him, and announced that Mr. Bazarov was in his room.

‘Yevgeny!’ murmured Arkady, almost with dismay; ‘has he been here long?’

‘Mr. Bazarov arrived this minute, sir, and gave orders not to announce him to Anna Sergyevna, but to show him straight up to you.’

‘Can any misfortune have happened at home?’ thought Arkady, and running hurriedly up the stairs, he at once opened the door. The sight of Bazarov at once reassured him, though a more experienced eye might very probably have discerned signs of inward agitation in the sunken, though still energetic face of the unexpected visitor. With a dusty cloak over his shoulders, with a cap on his head, he was sitting at the window; he did not even get up when Arkady flung himself with noisy exclamations on his neck.

‘This is unexpected! What good luck brought you?’ he kept repeating, bustling about the room like one who both imagines himself and wishes to show himself delighted. ‘I suppose everything’s all right at home; every one’s well, eh?’

‘Everything’s all right, but not every one’s well,’ said Bazarov. ‘Don’t be a chatterbox, but send for some kvass for me, sit down, and listen while I tell you all about it in a few, but, I hope, pretty vigorous sentences.’

Arkady was quiet while Bazarov described his duel with Pavel Petrovitch. Arkady was very much surprised, and even grieved, but he did not think it necessary to show this; he only asked whether his uncle’s wound was really not serious; and on receiving the reply that it was most interesting, but not from a medical point of view, he gave a forced smile, but at heart he felt both wounded and as it were ashamed. Bazarov seemed to understand him.

‘Yes, my dear fellow,’ he commented, ‘you see what comes of living with feudal personages. You turn a feudal personage yourself, and find yourself taking part in knightly tournaments. Well, so I set off for my father’s,’ Bazarov wound up, ‘and I’ve turned in here on the way … to tell you all this, I should say, if I didn’t think a useless lie a piece of foolery. No, I turned in here—the devil only knows why. You see, it’s sometimes a good thing for a man to take himself by the scruff of the neck and pull himself up, like a radish out of its bed; that’s what I’ve been doing of late…. But I wanted to have one more look at what I’m giving up, at the bed where I’ve been planted.’

‘I hope those words don’t refer to me,’ responded Arkady with some emotion; ‘I hope you don’t think of giving me up?’

Bazarov turned an intent, almost piercing look upon him.

‘Would that be such a grief to you? It strikes me you have given me up already, you look so fresh and smart…. Your affair with Anna Sergyevna must be getting on successfully.’

‘What do you mean by my affair with Anna Sergyevna?’

‘Why, didn’t you come here from the town on her account, chicken? By the way, how are those Sunday schools getting on? Do you mean to tell me you’re not in love with her? Or have you already reached the stage of discretion?’

‘Yevgeny, you know I have always been open with you; I can assure you, I will swear to you, you’re making a mistake.’

‘Hm! That’s another story,’ remarked Bazarov in an undertone. ‘But you needn’t be in a taking, it’s a matter of absolute indifference to me. A sentimentalist would say, «I feel that our paths are beginning to part,» but I will simply say that we’re tired of each other.’

‘Yevgeny …’

‘My dear soul, there’s no great harm in that. One gets tired of much more than that in this life. And now I suppose we’d better say good-bye, hadn’t we? Ever since I’ve been here I’ve had such a loathsome feeling, just as if I’d been reading Gogol’s effusions to the governor of Kalouga’s wife. By the way, I didn’t tell them to take the horses out.’

‘Upon my word, this is too much!’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll say nothing of myself; but that would be discourteous to the last degree to Anna Sergyevna, who will certainly wish to see you.’

‘Oh, you’re mistaken there.’

‘On the contrary, I am certain I’m right,’ retorted Arkady. ‘And what are you pretending for? If it comes to that, haven’t you come here on her account yourself?’

‘That may be so, but you’re mistaken any way.’

But Arkady was right. Anna Sergyevna desired to see Bazarov, and sent a summons to him by a steward. Bazarov changed his clothes before going to her; it turned out that he had packed his new suit so as to be able to get it out easily.

Madame Odintsov received him not in the room where he had so unexpectedly declared his love to her, but in the drawing-room. She held her finger tips out to him cordially, but her face betrayed an involuntary sense of tension.

‘Anna Sergyevna,’ Bazarov hastened to say, ‘before everything else I must set your mind at rest. Before you is a poor mortal, who has come to his senses long ago, and hopes other people too have forgotten his follies. I am going away for a long while; and though, as you will allow, I’m by no means a very soft creature, it would be anything but cheerful for me to carry away with me the idea that you remember me with repugnance.’

Anna Sergyevna gave a deep sigh like one who has just climbed up a high mountain, and her face was lighted up by a smile. She held out her hand a second time to Bazarov, and responded to his pressure.

‘Let bygones be bygones,’ she said. ‘I am all the readier to do so because, speaking from my conscience, I was to blame then too for flirting or something. In a word, let us be friends as before. That was a dream, wasn’t it? And who remembers dreams?’

‘Who remembers them? And besides, love … you know, is a purely imaginary feeling.’

‘Really? I am very glad to hear that.’

So Anna Sergyevna spoke, and so spoke Bazarov; they both supposed they were speaking the truth. Was the truth, the whole truth, to be found in their words? They could not themselves have said, and much less could the author. But a conversation followed between them precisely as though they completely believed one another.

Anna Sergyevna asked Bazarov, among other things, what he had been doing at the Kirsanovs’. He was on the point of telling her about his duel with Pavel Petrovitch, but he checked himself with the thought that she might imagine he was trying to make himself interesting, and answered that he had been at work all the time.

‘And I,’ observed Anna Sergyevna, ‘had a fit of depression at first, goodness knows why; I even made plans for going abroad, fancy!… Then it passed off, your friend Arkady Nikolaitch came, and I fell back into my old routine, and took up my real part again.’

‘What part is that, may I ask?’

‘The character of aunt, guardian, mother—call it what you like. By the way, do you know I used not quite to understand your close friendship with Arkady Nikolaitch; I thought him rather insignificant. But now I have come to know him better, and to see that he is clever…. And he’s young, he’s young … that’s the great thing … not like you and me, Yevgeny Vassilyitch.’

‘Is he still as shy in your company?’ queried Bazarov.

‘Why, was he?’ … Anna Sergyevna began, and after a brief pause she went on: ‘He has grown more confiding now; he talks to me. He used to avoid me before. Though, indeed, I didn’t seek his society either. He’s more friends with Katya.’

Bazarov felt irritated. ‘A woman can’t help humbugging, of course!’ he thought. ‘You say he used to avoid you,’ he said aloud, with a chilly smile; ‘but it is probably no secret to you that he was in love with you?’

‘What! he too?’ fell from Anna Sergyevna’s lips.

‘He too,’ repeated Bazarov, with a submissive bow. ‘Can it be you didn’t know it, and I’ve told you something new?’

Anna Sergyevna dropped her eyes. ‘You are mistaken, Yevgeny Vassilyitch.’

‘I don’t think so. But perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it.’ ‘And don’t you try telling me lies again for the future,’ he added to himself.

‘Why not? But I imagine that in this too you are attributing too much importance to a passing impression. I begin to suspect you are inclined to exaggeration.’

‘We had better not