'Gracious,' Ognyov had thought with surprise, 'do they always breathe this air here, or have they laid it on specially today for my arrival?'
Expecting a dry, official reception, he had entered the Kuznetsovs' house timidly, looking askance and tugging shyly at his beard. At first the old man furrowed his brow and did not understand how the Rural Council could be of use to this young man and his statistics, but when Ognyov gave him a full explanation of what statistical material was and where it was to be collected, Gavriil Petrovich perked up, beamed, and started to look at Ognyov's exercise-books with boyish curiosity . . . That same evening Ivan Alekseich was already dining with the Kuznetsovs. The potent vodka quickly went to his head, and as he watched the calm faces and lazy movements of his new friends, his whole body was filled with d sweet indolence that makes you feel like falling asleep, stretching yourself, or smiling. And the new friends studied him with kindly attention and asked him if his mother and father were still alive, how much he earned a month, and whether he often went to the theatre . . .
Ognyov recalled his journeys round the outlying districts, the picnics and fishing parties, and the group excursion to the nunnery to see the Abbess Martha, who gave each of the visitors a bead-purse; and he recalled those heated, interminable, typically Russian argu- ments, when the debaters, spluttering and banging their fists on the table, misunderstand and interrupt one another, contradict them- selves at every turn without noticing, keep changing the subject and after two or three hours of argument, laugh it all off saying:
'Heaven knows what set us arguing! We started in sunshine and ended in rain.'
'Do you remember when you and I and the doctor rode over to Shestovo?' Ivan Alekseich said. to Vera, as they approached the wood. 'That was the day we came across the holy fool. I gave him a five-kopeck piece and he crossed himself three times and threw it into the rye. Gracious, I'm taking so many impressions away with me that if one could turn them into a solid mass, they'd make a sizeable gold ingot! I don't understand why intelligent and sensitive people should want to herd together in the big cities and not come out here. Is there really more room to breathe and more truth to be found on the Nevsky and in those great big damp houses? I must say, my kind of life in furnished apartmems, chock-a-block with artists, academics and journalists, has always struck me as totally false.'
Twenry paces from the wood was a narrow footbridge over a sunken lane, with small pillars at the corners. This was always used hy the Kuznetsovs and their vjsitors as a hrief.stopping-place during evening walks. From here those so indinc-d could call out the echo from the wood, and the track could he seen disappearing into the dark cutting bctween the trces.
'Here we are at the bridge,' said Ognyov. 'Time for you to turn hack . . .'
Vera stopped and drew a deep hreath.
'Let"s sit here for a while,' she said, sitting down on one of the pillars. 'Usually everyone sits down when people are saying farewell before a departure.'
Ognyov settled himself beside her on his pilc of hooks and went on talking. She was breathing hard after the walk and was not looking at Ivan Alekseich but to one side, so that he could not see her face.
'And suppose we suddenly meet in ten years' time,' he was saying. "What shall we he like then? You'll he the respected mother of a family, and I'll be the author of some respected, totally unread collection ofstatistics as fat as forty thousand others. We'll meet .and remember the old days . . . Now we're experiencing the present, it ahsorhs and excites us, but when we meet then, we shan't remember the date or the month or even the year when we last saw each other on this bridge. You'll be a different person, I expect . .. don't you think you'll he a different person?'
Vera gave a start and turned her face towards him.
'What?' she asked.
'I was just asking you -'
'I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you were saying.'
Only now did Ognyov notice the change in Vera. She was pale, breathing in starts, and her tremblingconveyed itselfto her arms, lips and head, so that two curls rather than the usual one had escaped from her hair . . . She was evidently trying to avoid looking him straight in the eye, and in an effort to disguise her agitation kept adjusting her collar as if it were too tight, or shifting her red shawl from shoulder to shoulder . . .
'You must be cold,' said Ognyov. 'Sitting in the mist isn't exactly healthy. Let me see you nach Hause.'
Vera did not reply.
'What's the matter?' Ivan Alekseich asked with a smile. 'Why don't you say anything or answer my questions? Are you ill, or angry? Tell me.'
Vera pressed the palm of her hand firmly against the cheek that was turned towards Ognyov and immediately drew it away again sharply.
'It's terrible . . .' shc whispered, with an expression of acute pain on her face. 'Terrible!'
'What's terrible?' asked Ognyov, shrugging his shoulders and making no secret of his astonishment. 'What's the matter?'
Still breathing hardand with shoulders trembling, Vera turned her back to him, looked at the sky for half a minute and said:
'I must have a talk with you, Ivan Alekseich . . .'
'I'm listening.'
'You may find this strange . . . You'll be surprised, but I can't help it . . .'
Ognyov shrugged his shoulders once more and prepared to listen.
'It's like this,' Verochka began, bowing her head and fiddling with a bobble on her shawl. 'You see, what I wanted to tell you . . . was that . . . You may find this strange and . . . silly, but I . . . I can't bear it any more.'
Vera's words turned into a vague mumble and suddenly broke off in sobs. The young girl hid her face in her shawl, bowed her head even lower and sobbed bitterly. Ivan Alekseich cleared his throat in embarrassment, and too taken aback to know what to say or do, looked about him helplessly. Being unused to sobs and tears, he felt his own eyes beginning to prickle.
'This is awful,' he began mumbling desperately. 'Vera Gavrilovna, whatever's the matter? Are you - are you ill, my dear? Has someone offended you? You must tell me, perhaps I can ... I may be able to help . . .'
When, in an attempt to console her, he allowed himself to take her hands carefully away from her face, she smiled at him through her tears and said:
'I ... I love you.'
These simple ordinary words were spoken in simple human lan- guage, yet Ognyov turned away from Vera in utter confusion, stood up, and felt his confusion change to fear.
The sad, warm, sentimental mood induced in him by the farewell and Kuznetsov's vodka had suddenly vanished, leaving an acutely unpleasant feeling ofawkwardness in its stead. Asifall his affections had been turned upside down, he almost glared at Vera, and now that she had declared her love for him and cast off that inaccessibility which so becomes a woman, she seemed to him shorter, plainer, darker.
"What a thing to happen,' he thought to himself, aghast. 'But do 1 - do I love her, or not? That"s the problem!'
Vera, meanwhile, now that the most important and difficult thing had at last been said, was breathing easily and freely again. She too st<K>d up and looking Ivan Alekseich straight in the face, spoke rapidly, ardently and without restraint.
Just as someone who has had a sudden fright cannot recall .lfter- wards the order in which he heard the sounds of the disaster that stunned him, so Ognyo\" cannot remember Vera's words and sen- tences. All that he does remember is their general impon, Vera herself and the feeling that her words produced in him. He remem- bers her voice, which sounded stifled and somewhat hoarse with emotion, and her unusually musical, passionate intonation. Crying, laughing, with tears glistening on her eyelashes, she told him that from the very first days of their acquaintance she had been struck by his originaliry and intellect, his kind, clever eyes, and the aims and tasks he had set himself in life; that she had fallen in love with him passionately, madly and deeply; that when she used to come into the house from the garden during the summer and saw his cape in the hall or heard his voice from a distance, she would feel her heart go numb at the prospect of happiness; even his feeblest jokes made her laugh, to her every number in his exercise-books appeared unusually wise and exalted, and his knobbly walking-stick was to her more beautiful than the trees themseh es.