Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovich went into the garden to his favorite arbor. He was filled with melancholy thoughts. For the first time he saw clearly the distance separating him from his son and he foresaw that it would grow wider every day. So they were spent in vain, those winters in Petersburg, when sometimes he had pored for whole days on end over the latest books; in vain had he listened to the talk of the young men, and rejoiced when he succeeded in slipping a few of his own words into heated discussions.

“My brother says we are right,” he thought, “and laying aside all vanity, it even seems to me that they are further from the truth than we are, though all the same I feel they have something behind them which we lack, some superiority over us . . . is it youth? No, it can’t only be that; their superiority may be that they show fewer traces of the slaveowner than we do.”

Nikolai Petrovich’s head sank despondently, and he passed his hand over his face.

“But to renounce poetry, to have no feeling for art, for nature . . .”

And he looked round, as though trying to understand how it was possible to have no feeling for nature. It was already evening; the sun was hidden behind a small clump of aspens which grew about a quarter of a mile from the garden; its shadow stretched indefinitely across the motionless fields. A little peasant on a white pony was riding along the dark narrow path near the wood; his whole figure was clearly visible even to the patch on his shoulder, although he was in the shade; the pony’s hoofs rose and fell with graceful distinctness. The sun’s rays on the farther side fell full on the clump of trees, and piercing through them threw such a warm light on the aspen trunks that they looked like pines, and their leaves seemed almost dark blue, while above them rose a pale blue sky, tinged by the red sunset glow. The swallows flew high; the wind had quite died down, some late bees hummed lazily among the lilac blossoms, a swarm of midges hung like a cloud over a solitary branch which stood out against the sky. “How beautiful, my God!” thought Nikolai Petrovich, and his favorite verses almost rose to his lips; then he remembered Arkady’s Stoff und Kraft — and remained silent, but he still sat there, abandoning himself to the sad consolation of solitary thought. He was fond of dreaming, and his country life had developed that tendency in him. How short a time ago he had been dreaming like this, waiting for his son at the posting station, and how much had changed since that day; their relations, then indeterminate, had now been defined — and how defined! His dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for so many years, not as a good domesticated housewife, but as a young girl with a slim waist, an innocent inquiring look and a tightly twisted pigtail on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and running into her by accident he tried to apologize but could only mutter “Pardon, Monsieur,” while she bowed, smiled, then suddenly seemed frightened and ran away, glanced quickly back at him, looked serious and blushed. Afterwards the first timid visits, the hints, the half-smiles and embarrassment; the uncertain sadness, the ups and downs and at last that overwhelming joy . . . where had it all vanished away? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are happy . . . “But,” he mused, “those sweet fleeting moments, why could one not live an eternal undying life in them?”

He made no effort to clarify his thoughts, but he felt that he longed to hold that blissful time by something stronger than memory; he longed to feel his Marya near him, to sense her warmth and breathing; already he could fancy her actual presence . . .

“Nikolai Petrovich,” came the sound of Fenichka’s voice close by. “Wher............