‘Why don’t you dance?’ she asked
him at last.
‘I don’t care for it,’ answered
Lutchkov.
‘Where’s your place?’
‘Over there.’
Lutchkov conducted Masha to her chair, coolly bowed
to her and coolly returned to his corner... but there
was an agreeable stirring of the spleen within him.
Kister asked Masha for a dance.
‘What a strange person your friend is!’
‘He does interest you...’ said Fyodor
Fedoritch, with a sly twinkle of his blue and kindly
eyes.
‘Yes... he must be very unhappy.’
‘He unhappy? What makes you suppose so?’
And Fyodor Fedoritch laughed.
‘You don’t know... you don’t know...’
Masha solemnly shook her head with an important air.
’Me not know? How’s that?’...
Masha shook her head again and glanced towards Lutchkov.
Avdey Ivanovitch noticed the glance, shrugged his
shoulders imperceptibly, and walked away into the
other room.
Several months had passed since that evening.
Lutchkov had not once been at the Perekatovs’.
But Kister visited them pretty often. Nenila
Makarievna had taken a fancy to him, but it was not
she that attracted Fyodor Fedoritch. He liked
Masha. Being an inexperienced person who had
not yet talked himself out, he derived great pleasure
from the interchange of ideas and feelings, and he
had a simple-hearted faith in the possibility of a
calm and exalted friendship between a young man and
a young girl.
One day his three well-fed and skittish horses whirled
him rapidly along to Mr. Perekatov’s house.
It was a summer day, close and sultry. Not a
cloud anywhere. The blue of the sky was so thick
and dark on the horizon that the eye mistook it for
storm-cloud. The house Mr. Perekatov had erected
for a summer residence had been, with the foresight
usual in the steppes, built with every window directly
facing the sun. Nenila Makarievna had every shutter
closed from early morning. Kister walked into
the cool, half-dark drawing-room. The light lay
in long lines on the floor and in short, close streaks
on the walls. The Perekatov family gave Fyodor
Fedoritch a friendly reception. After dinner Nenila
Makarievna went away to her own room to lie down; Mr.
Perekatov settled himself on the sofa in the drawing-room;
Masha sat near the window at her embroidery frame,
Kister facing her. Masha, without opening her
frame, leaned lightly over it, with her head in her
hands. Kister began telling her something; she
listened inattentively, as though waiting for something,
looked from time to time towards her father, and all
at once stretched out her hand.
’Listen, Fyodor Fedoritch... only speak a little
more softly... papa’s asleep.’
Mr. Perekatov had indeed as usual dropped asleep on
the sofa, with his head hanging and his mouth a little
open.
‘What is it?’ Kister inquired with curiosity.
