Madame Odintsov turned her head slightly.
“You ask why. Have you not enjoyed staying here?
Or do you think no one will miss you when you are gone?”
“I am sure of that.”
Madame Odintsov was silent for a moment.
“You are wrong in thinking so.
But I don’t believe you.
You can’t say that seriously.” Bazarov continued to sit motionless. “Evgeny Vassilich, why don’t you speak?”
“What am I to say to you?
There is no point in missing people, and that applies to me even more than to most.”
“Why so?”
“I’m a straightforward uninteresting person.
I don’t know how to talk.”
“You are fishing for compliments, Evgeny Vassilich.”
“That’s not my custom.
Don’t you know yourself that the graceful side of life, which you value so highly, is beyond my reach?”
Madame Odintsov bit the corner of her handkerchief.
“You may think what you like, but I shall find it dull when you go away.”
“Arkady will stay on,” remarked Bazarov.
Madame Odintsov slightly shrugged her shoulders.
“It will be dull for me,” she repeated.
“Really?
In any case you won’t feel like that for long.”
“What makes you suppose so?”
“Because you told me yourself that you are bored only when your orderly routine is disturbed.
You have organized your life with such impeccable regularity that there can’t be any place left in it for boredom or sadness . . . for any painful emotions.”
“And do you consider that I am so impeccable . . . I mean, that I have organized my life so thoroughly . . .”
“I should think so!
For example, in five minutes the clock will strike ten and I already know in advance that you will turn me out of the room.”
“No, I won’t turn you out, Evgeny Vassilich.
You may stay.
Open that window . . . I feel half stifled.”
Bazarov got up and pushed the window; it flew wide open with a crash . . . he had not expected it to open so easily; also, his hands were trembling.
The soft dark night looked into the room, with its nearly black sky, its faintly rustling trees, and the fresh fragrance of the pure open air.
“Draw the blind and sit down,” said Madame Odintsov. “I want to have a talk with you before you go away.
Tell me something about yourself; you never talk about yourself.”
“I try to talk to you about useful subjects, Anna Sergeyevna.”
“You are very modest . . . but I should like to know something about you, about your family and your father, for whom you are forsaking us.”
“Why is she talking like this?” thought Bazarov.
“All that is very uninteresting,” he said aloud, “particularly for you. We are obscure people.”
“You regard me as an aristocrat?”
Bazarov lifted his eyes and looked at Madame Odintsov.
“Yes,” he said with exaggerated harshness.
She smiled.
“I see you know me very little, though of course you maintain that all people are alike and that it is not worth while studying individuals.
I will tell the story of my life sometime . . . but first tell me yours.”
“I know you very little,” repeated Bazarov. “Perhaps you are right; perhaps really everyone is a riddle.
You, for instance; you avoid society, you find it tedious — and you invited two students to stay with you.
What makes you, with your beauty and your intelligence, live permanently in the country?”
“What?