a quiet smile, winking his
solitary eye.

Next to Darya Mihailovna, it was Natalya to whom Rudin used to talk
most often and at most length. He used privately to give her books, to
confide his plans to her, and to read her the first pages of the essays
and other works he had in his mind. Natalya did not always fully grasp
the significance of them.

But Rudin did not seem to care much about her understanding, so long
as she listened to him. His intimacy with Natalya was not altogether
pleasing to Darya Mihailovna. 'However,' she thought, 'let her chatter
away with him in the country. She amuses him as a little girl now. There
is no great harm in it, and, at any rate, it will improve her mind. At
Petersburg I will soon put a stop to it.'

Darya Mihailovna was mistaken. Natalya did not chatter to Rudin like a
school-girl; she eagerly drank in his words, she tried to penetrate to
their full significance; she submitted her thoughts, her doubts to him;
he became her leader, her guide. So far, it was only the brain that
was stirred, but in the young the brain is not long stirred alone. What
sweet moments Natalya passed when at times in the garden on the seat,
in the transparent shade of the aspen tree, Rudin began to read Goethe's
_Faust_, Hoffman, or Bettina's letters, or Novalis, constantly stopping
and explaining what seemed obscure to her. Like almost all Russian
girls, she spoke German badly, but she understood it well, and Rudin was
thoroughly imbued with German poetry, German romanticism and philosophy,
and he drew her after him into these forbidden lands. Unimagined
splendours were revealed there to her earnest eyes from the pages of the
book which Rudin held on his knee; a stream of divine visions, of new,
illuminating ideas, seemed to flow in rhythmic music into her soul, and
in her heart, moved with the high delight of noble feeling, slowly was
kindled and fanned into a flame the holy spark of enthusiasm.

'Tell me, Dmitri Nikolaitch,' she began one day, sitting by the window
at her embroidery-frame, 'shall you be in Petersburg in the winter?'

'I don't know,' replied Rudin, as he let the book he had been glancing
through fall upon his knee; 'if I can find the means, I shall go.'

He spoke dejectedly; he felt tired, and had done nothing all day.

'I think you are sure to find the means.'

Rudin shook his head.

'You think so!'

And he looked away expressively.

Natalya was on the point of replying, but