Do you think I’m too old?”
“Please, how could I possibly . . . but in that case may I ask you for a mazurka?”
Madame Odintsov smiled graciously.
“Certainly,” she said, and looked at Arkady, not exactly patronizingly but in the way married sisters look at very young brothers.
She was in fact not much older than Arkady — she was twenty-nine — but in her presence he felt like a schoolboy, so that the difference in their ages seemed to matter much more.
Matvei Ilyich came up to her in a majestic manner and started to pay her compliments.
Arkady moved aside, but he still watched her; he could not take his eyes off her even during the quadrille.
She talked to her partner as easily as she had to the grand official, slightly turning her head and eyes, and once or twice she laughed softly.
Her nose — like most Russian noses — was rather thick, and her complexion was not translucently clear; nevertheless Arkady decided that he had never before met such a fascinating woman.
The sound of her voice clung to his ears, the very folds of her dress seemed to fall differently — more gracefully and amply than on other women — and her movements were wonderfully flowing and at the same time natural.
Arkady was overcome by shyness when at the first sounds of the mazurka he took a seat beside his partner; he wanted to talk to her, but he only passed his hand through his hair and could not find a single word to say.
But his shyness and agitation soon passed; Madame Odintsov’s tranquillity communicated itself to him; within a quarter of an hour he was telling her freely about his father, his uncle, his life in Petersburg and in the country.
Madame Odintsov listened to him with courteous sympathy, slowly opening and closing her fan. The conversation was broken off when her partners claimed her; Sitnikov, among others, asked her to dance twice.
She came back, sat down again, took up her fan, and did not even breathe more rapidly, while Arkady started talking again, penetrated through and through by the happiness of being near her, talking to her, looking at her eyes, her lovely forehead and her whole charming, dignified and intelligent face.
She said little, but her words showed an understanding of life; judging by some of her remarks Arkady came to the conclusion that this young woman had already experienced and thought a great deal . . .
“Who is that you were standing with,” she asked him, “when Mr. Sitnikov brought you over to me?”
“So you noticed him?” asked Arkady in his turn. “He has a wonderful face, hasn’t he?
That’s my friend Bazarov.”
Arkady went on to discuss “his friend.”
He spoke of him in such detail and with so much enthusiasm that Madame Odintsov turned round and looked at him attentively.
Meanwhile the mazurka was drawing to a close.
Arkady was sorry to leave his partner, he had spent almost an hour with her so happily!
Certainly he had felt the whole time as though she were showing indulgence to him, as though he ought to be grateful to her . . . but young hearts are not weighed down by that feeling.
The music stopped.
“Merci,” murmured Madame Odintsov, rising. “You promised to pay me a visit; bring your friend with you.
I am very curious to meet a man who has the courage to believe in nothing.”
The governor came up to Madame Odintsov, announced that supper was ready, and with a worried look offered her his arm.
As she went out, she turned to smile once more at Arkady.
He bowed low, followed her with his eyes (how graceful her figure seemed to him, how radiant in the sober luster of the black silk folds!) and he was conscious of some kind of refreshing humility of soul as he thought, “This very minute she has forgotten my existence.”
“Well?” Bazarov asked Arkady as soon as he had returned to the corner. “Did you have a good time?
A man has just told me that your lady is — oh never mind what — but the fellow is probably a fool.
What do you think? Is she?”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” said Arkady.
“My goodness, what innocence!”
“In that case I don’t understand the man you quote.
Madame Odintsov is very charming, but she is so cold and reserved that . . .”
“Still waters run deep, you know,” interposed Bazarov. “You say she is cold; that just adds to the flavor.
You like ices, I expect.”
“Perhaps,” muttered Arkady. “I can’t express any opinion about that.
She wants to meet you and asked me to bring you over to visit her.”
“I can imagine how you described me!
Never mind, you did well.
Take me along.
Whoever she may be, whether she’s just a provincial climber or an ‘emancipated’ woman like Kukshina — anyhow she’s got a pair of shoulders the like of which I haven’t seen for a long time.”
Arkady was hurt by Bazarov’s cynicism, but — as often happens — he did not blame his friend for those particular things which he disliked in him . . .
“Why do you disagree with free thought for women?” he asked in a low voice.
“Because, my lad, as far as I can see, free-thinking women are all monsters.”
The conversation was cut short at this point.
Both young men left immediately after supper.
They were pursued by a nervously angry but fainthearted laugh from Madame Kukshina, whose vanity had been deeply wounded by the fact that neither of them had paid the slightest attention to her.