her, Fedya,’ Lutchkov remarked sarcastically.

‘Not at all. I never even thought of it.’

‘Fedya, you’re in love with her!’

‘What nonsense! As if one couldn’t…’

‘You’re in love with her, friend of my heart, beetle on my hearth,’ Avdey Ivanovitch chanted drawling.

‘Ah, Avdey, you really ought to be ashamed!’ Kister said with vexation.

With any one else Lutchkov would thereupon have kept on more than before; Kister he did not tease. ‘Well, well, sprechen Sie deutsch, Ivan Andreitch,’ he muttered in an undertone, ‘don’t be angry.’

‘Listen, Avdey,’ Kister began warmly, and he sat down beside him. ‘You know I care for you.’ (Lutchkov made a wry face.) ‘But there’s one thing, I’ll own, I don’t like about you… it’s just that you won’t make friends with any one, that you will stick at home, and refuse all intercourse with nice people. Why, there are nice people in the world, hang it all! Suppose you have been deceived in life, have been embittered, what of it; there’s no need to rush into people’s arms, of course, but why turn your back on everybody? Why, you’ll cast me off some day, at that rate, I suppose.’

Lutchkov went on smoking coolly.

‘That’s how it is no one knows you… except me; goodness knows what some people think of you… Avdey!’ added Kister after a brief silence; ‘do you disbelieve in virtue, Avdey?’

‘Disbelieve… no, I believe in it,’… muttered Lutchkov.

Kister pressed his hand feelingly.

‘I want,’ he went on in a voice full of emotion, ‘to reconcile you with life. You will grow happier, blossom out… yes, blossom out. How I shall rejoice then! Only you must let me dispose of you now and then, of your time. To-day it’s—what? Monday… to-morrow’s Tuesday… on Wednesday, yes, on Wednesday we’ll go together to the Perekatovs’. They will be so glad to see you… and we shall have such a jolly time there… and now let me have a pipe.’

Avdey Ivanovitch lay without budging on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. Kister lighted a pipe, went to the window, and began drumming on the panes with his fingers.

‘So they’ve been talking about me?’ Avdey asked suddenly.

‘They have,’ Kister responded with meaning.

‘What did they say?’

‘Oh, they talked. There’re very anxious to make your acquaintance.’

‘Which of them’s that?’

‘I say, what curiosity!’

Avdey called his servant, and ordered his horse to be saddled.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘The riding-school.’

‘Well, good-bye. So we’re going to the Perekatovs’, eh?’

‘All right, if you like,’ Lutchkov said lazily, stretching.

‘Bravo, old man!’ cried Kister, and he went out into the street, pondered, and sighed deeply.

IV

Masha was just approaching the drawing-room door when the arrival of Kister and Lutchkov was announced. She promptly returned to her own room, and went up to the looking-glass…. Her heart was throbbing violently. A girl came to summon her to the drawing-room. Masha drank a little water, stopped twice on the stairs, and at last went down. Mr. Perekatov was not at home. Nenila Makarievna was sitting on the sofa; Lutchkov was sitting in an easy-chair, wearing his uniform, with his hat on his knees; Kister was near him. They both got up on Masha’s entrance—Kister with his usual friendly smile, Lutchkov with a solemn and constrained air. She bowed to them in confusion, and went up to her mother. The first ten minutes passed off favourably. Masha recovered herself, and gradually began to watch Lutchkov. To the questions addressed to him by the lady of the house, he answered briefly, but uneasily; he was shy, like all egoistic people. Nenila Makarievna suggested a stroll in the garden to her guests, but did not herself go beyond the balcony. She did not consider it essential never to lose sight of her daughter, and to be constantly hobbling after her with a fat reticule in her hands, after the fashion of many mothers in the steppes. The stroll lasted rather a long while. Masha talked more with Kister, but did not dare to look either at him or at Lutchkov. Avdey Ivanovitch did not address a remark to her; Kister’s voice showed agitation. He laughed and chattered a little over-much…. They reached the stream. A couple of yards or so from the bank there was a water-lily, which seemed to rest on the smooth surface of the water, encircled by its broad, round leaves.

‘What a beautiful flower!’ observed Masha.

She had hardly uttered these words when Lutchkov pulled out his sword, clutched with one hand at the frail twigs of a willow, and, bending his whole body over the water, cut off the head of the flower. ‘It’s deep here, take care!’ Masha cried in terror. Lutchkov with the tip of his sword brought the flower to the bank, at her very feet. She bent down, picked up the flower, and gazed with tender, delighted amazement at Avdey. ‘Bravo!’ cried Kister. ‘And I can’t swim…’ Lutchkov observed abruptly. Masha did not like that remark. ‘What made him say that?’ she wondered.

Lutchkov and Kister remained at Mr. Perekatov’s till the evening. Something new and unknown was passing in Masha’s soul; a dreamy perplexity was reflected more than once in her face. She moved somehow more slowly, she did not flush on meeting her mother’s eyes—on the contrary, she seemed to seek them, as though she would question her. During the whole evening, Lutchkov paid her a sort of awkward attention; but even this awkwardness gratified her innocent vanity. When they had both taken leave, with a promise to come again in a few days, she quietly went off to her own room, and for a long while, as it were, in bewilderment she looked about her. Nenila Makarievna came to her, kissed and embraced her as usual. Masha opened her lips, tried to say something—and did not utter a word. She wanted to confess—-she did not know what. Her soul was gently wandering in dreams. On the little table by her bedside the flower Lutchkov had picked lay in water in a clean glass. Masha, already in bed, sat up cautiously, leaned on her elbow, and her maiden lips softly touched the fresh white petals….

‘Well,’ Kister questioned his friend next day, ‘do you like the Perekatovs? Was I right? eh? Tell me.’

Lutchkov did not answer.

‘No, do tell me, do tell me!’

‘Really, I don’t know.’

‘Nonsense, come now!’

‘That… what’s her name… Mashenka’s all right; not bad-looking.’

‘There, you see…’ said Kister—and he said no more.

Five days later Lutchkov of his own accord suggested that they should call on the Perekatovs.

Alone he would not have gone to see them; in Fyodor Fedoritch’s absence he would have had to keep up a conversation, and that he could not do, and as far as possible avoided.

On the second visit of the two friends, Masha was much more at her ease. She was by now secretly glad that she had not disturbed her mamma by an uninvited avowal. Before dinner, Avdey had offered to try a young horse, not yet broken in, and, in spite of its frantic rearing, he mastered it completely. In the evening he thawed, and fell into joking and laughing—and though he soon pulled himself up, yet he had succeeded in making a momentary unpleasant impression on Masha. She could not yet be sure herself what the feeling exactly was that Lutchkov excited in her, but everything she did not like in him she set down to the influence of misfortune, of loneliness.

V

The friends began to pay frequent visits to the Perekatovs’. Kister’s position became more and more painful. He did not regret his action… no, but he desired at least to cut short the time of his trial. His devotion to Masha increased daily; she too felt warmly towards him; but to be nothing more than a go-between, a confidant, a friend even—it’s a dreary, thankless business! Coldly idealistic people talk a great deal about the sacredness of suffering, the bliss of suffering… but to Kister’s warm and simple heart his sufferings were not a source of any bliss whatever. At last, one day, when Lutchkov, ready dressed, came to fetch him, and the carriage was waiting at the steps, Fyodor Fedoritch, to the astonishment of his friend, announced point-blank that he should stay at home. Lutchkov entreated him, was vexed and angry… Kister pleaded a headache. Lutchkov set off alone.

The bully had changed in many ways of late. He left his comrades in peace, did not annoy the novices, and though his spirit had not ‘blossomed out,’ as Kister had foretold, yet he certainly had toned down a little. He could not have been called ‘disillusioned’ before—he had seen and experienced almost nothing—and so it is not surprising that Masha engrossed his thoughts. His heart was not touched though; only his spleen was satisfied. Masha’s feelings for him were of a strange kind. She almost never looked him straight in the face; she could not talk to him…. When they happened to be left alone together, Masha felt horribly awkward. She took him for an exceptional man, and felt overawed by him and agitated in his presence, fancied she did not understand him, and was unworthy of his confidence; miserably, drearily—but continually—she thought of him. Kister’s society, on the contrary, soothed her and put her in a good humour, though it neither overjoyed nor excited her. With him she could chatter away for hours together, leaning on his arm, as though he were her brother, looking affectionately into his face, and laughing with his laughter—and she rarely thought of him. In Lutchkov there was something enigmatic for the young girl; she felt that his soul was ‘dark as a forest,’ and