‘Very good,’ Kister cut in coldly and
abruptly. ’I accept your challenge.
Kindly send me your second.’
‘Yes, yes,’ pursued Avdey, who, like a
cat, could not bear to let his victim go so soon:
’it’ll give me great pleasure I’ll
own to put a bullet into your fair and idealistic
countenance to-morrow.’
‘You are abusive after a challenge, it seems,’
Kister rejoined contemptuously. ‘Be so
good as to go. I’m ashamed of you.’
’Oh, to be sure, delicatesse!...
Ah, Marya Sergievna, I don’t know French!’
growled Avdey, as he put on his cap. ’Till
we meet again, Fyodor Fedoritch!’
He bowed and walked out.
Kister paced several times up and down the room.
His face burned, his breast heaved violently.
He felt neither fear nor anger; but it sickened him
to think what this man really was that he had once
looked upon as a friend. The idea of the duel
with Lutchkov was almost pleasant to him....
Once get free from the past, leap over this rock in
his path, and then to float on an untroubled tide...
‘Good,’ he thought, ’I shall be
fighting to win my happiness.’ Masha’s
image seemed to smile to him, to promise him success.
‘I’m not going to be killed! not I!’
he repeated with a serene smile. On the table
lay the letter to his mother.... He felt a momentary
pang at his heart. He resolved any way to defer
sending it off. There was in Kister that quickening
of the vital energies of which a man is aware in face
of danger. He calmly thought over all the possible
results of the duel, mentally placed Masha and himself
in all the agonies of misery and parting, and looked
forward to the future with hope. He swore to
himself not to kill Lutchkov... He felt irresistibly
drawn to Masha. He paused a second, hurriedly
arranged things, and directly after dinner set off
to the Perekatovs. All the evening Kister was
in good spirits, perhaps in too good spirits.
Masha played a great deal on the piano, felt no foreboding
of evil, and flirted charmingly with him. At
first her unconsciousness wounded him, then he took
Masha’s very unconsciousness as a happy omen,
and was rejoiced and reassured by it. She had
grown fonder and fonder of him every day; happiness
was for her a much more urgent need than passion.
Besides, Avdey had turned her from all exaggerated
desires, and she renounced them joyfully and for ever.
Nenila Makarievna loved Kister like a son. Sergei
Sergeitch as usual followed his wife’s lead.
‘Till we meet,’ Masha said to Kister,
following him into the hall and gazing at him with
a soft smile, as he slowly and tenderly kissed her
hands.
‘Till we meet,’ Fyodor Fedoritch repeated
confidently; ‘till we meet.’
But when he had driven half a mile from the Perekatovs’
house, he stood up in the carriage, and with vague
uneasiness began looking for the lighted windows....
All in the house was dark as in the tomb.
