Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with tears and his hand began to tremble as it lay on the table. Zina guessed what he was thinking about, and her eyes, too, glistened and looked red.
" Grigory, come here," she said to Vlassitch.
They walked away to the window and began talk- ing of something in a whisper. From the way that Vlassitch stooped down to her and the way she looked at him, Pyotr Mihalitch realised again that everything was irreparably over, and that it was no use to talk of anything. Zina we.nt out of the room.
" Well, brother I " Vlassitch began, after a brief silence, rubbing his hands and smiling. " I called our life happiness just now, but that was, so to speak, poetical license. In reality, there has not been a sense of happiness so far. Zina has been thinking all the time of you, of her mother, and has been worrying; looking at her, I, too, felt worried. Hers is a bold, free nature, but, you know, it's difficult when you're not used to it, and she is young, too. The servants call her ' Miss '; i t seems a trifle, but it upsets her. There it is, brother."
Zina brought in a plateful of strawberries. She was followed by a little maidservant, looking crushed and humble, who set a jug of milk on the table and made a very low bow : she had something about her that was in keeping with the old furniture, something petrified and dreary.
The sound of the rain had ceased. Pyotr Mihal- itch ate strawberries while Vlassitch and Zina looked at him in silence. The moment of the inevitable but useless conversation was approaching, and all three felt the burden of it. Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with tears again; he pushed away his plate and said that he must be going home, or it would be getting late, and perhaps it would rain again. The time had come when common decency required Zina to speak of those at home and of her new life.
" How are things at home? " she asked rapidly, and her pale face quivered. " How is mother? "
" You know mother . . ." said Pyotr Mihalitch, not looking at her.
" Petrusha, you've thought a great deal about what has happened," she said, taking hold of her brother's sleeve, and he knew how hard it was for her to speak. " You've thought a great deaclass="underline" tell me, can we reckon on mother's accepting Grigory . . . and the whole position, one day? "
She stood close to her brother, face to face with him, and he was astonished that she was so beauti- ful, and that he seemed not to have noticed it before. And it seemed to him utterly absurd that his sister, so like his mother, pampered, elegant, should be liv- ing with Vlassitch and in Vlassitch's house, with the petrified servant, and the table with six legs — in the house where a man had been flogged to death, and that she was not going home with him, but was staying here to sleep.
" You know mother," he said, not answering her question. " I think you ought to have . . . to do something, to ask her forgiveness or something. . . ."
"But to ask her forgiveness would mean pretend- ing we had done wrong. I'm ready to tell a lie to comfort mother, but it won't lead anywhere. I know mother. Well, what will be, must be I " said Zina, growing more cheerful now that the most un- pleasant had been said. " We'll wait for five years, ten years, and be patient, and then God's will be done."
She took her brother's arm, and when she walked through the dark hall she squeezed close to him. They went out on the steps. Pyotr Mihalitch said good-bye, got on his horse, and set off at a walk; Zina and Vlassitch walked a little way with him. It was still and warm, with a delicious smell of hay; stars were twinkling brightly between the clouds.
Vlassitch's old garden, which had seen so many gloomy stories in its time, lay slumbering in the dark- ness, and for some reason it was mournful riding through it.
" Zina and I to-day after dinner spent some really exalted moments," said Vlassitch. " I read aloud to her an excellent article on the question of emi- gration. You must read it, brother I You really must. It's remarkable for its lofty tone. I could not resist writing a letter to the editor to be for- warded to the author. I wrote only a single line : ' I thank you and warmly press your noble hand.' "
Pyotr Mihalitch was tempted to say, " Don't med- dle in what does not concern you," but he held his tongue.
Vlassitch walked by his right stirrup and Zina by the left; both seemed to have forgotten that they had to go home. It was damp, and they had almost reached Koltovitch's copse. Pyotr Mihalitch felt that they were expecting something from him, though they hardly knew what it was, and he felt unbearably sorry for them. Now as they walked by the horse with submissive faces, lost in thought, he had a deep conviction that they were unhappy, and could not be happy, and their love seemed to him a melancholy, irreparable mistake. Pity and the sense that he could do nothing to help them re- duced him to that state of spiritual softening when he was ready to make any sacrifice to get rid of the painful feeling of sympathy.
" I'll come over sometimes for a night," he said. But it sounded as though he were making a con- cession, and did not satisfy him. When they stopped near Koltovitch's copse to say good-bye, he bent down to Zina, touched her shoulder, and said: " You are right, Zina I You have done well." To avoid saying more and bursting into tears, he lashed his horse and galloped into the wood. As he rode into the darkness, he looked round and saw Vlassitch and Zina walking home along the road — he taking long strides, while she walked with a hurried, jerky step beside him — talking eagerly about something.
" I am an old woman I " thought Pyotr Mihal- itch. " I went to solve the question and I have only made it more complicated — there it is I "
He was heavy at heart. When he got out of the copse he rode at a walk and then stopped his horse near the pond. He wanted to sit and think without moving. The moon was rising and was refl.ected in a streak of red on the other side of the pond. There were low rumbles of thunder in the distance. Pyotr Mihalitch looked steadily at the water and imagined his sister's despair, her martyr-like pallor, the tearless eyes with which she would conceal her humiliation from others. He imagined her with child, imagined the death of their mother, her funeral, Zina's horror. . . . The proud, supersti- tious old woman would be sure to die of grief. Ter- rible pictures of the future rose before him on the background of smooth, dark water, and among pale feminine figures he saw himself, a weak, cowardly man with a guilty face.
A hundred paces off on the right bank of the pond, something dark was standing motionless : was it a man or a tall post? Pyotr Mihalitch thought of the divinity student who had been killed and thrown into the pond.