Well, he can't do anything without that. He buttons his great-coat
as if he were fulfilling a sacred duty. I should like to put him on a
desert island and look round a corner to see how he would behave there.
And he discourses on simplicity!'

'But tell me, my dear fellow,' asked Volintsev, 'what is it, philosophy
or what?'

'How can I tell you? On one side it is philosophy, I daresay, and on the
other something altogether different It is not right to put every folly
down to philosophy.'

Volintsev looked at him.

'Wasn't he lying then, do you imagine?'

'No, my son, he wasn't lying. But, do you know, we've talked enough of
this. Let's light our pipes and call Alexandra Pavlovna in here. It's
easier to talk when she's with us and easier to be silent. She shall
make us some tea.'

'Very well,' replied Volintsev. 'Sasha, come in,' he cried aloud.

Alexandra Pavlovna came in. He grasped her hand and pressed it warmly to
his lips.

Rudin returned in a curious and mingled frame of mind. He was annoyed
with himself, he reproached himself for his unpardonable precipitancy,
his boyish impulsiveness. Some one has justly said: there is nothing
more painful than the consciousness of having just done something
stupid.

Rudin was devoured by regret.

'What evil genius drove me,' he muttered between his teeth, 'to call on
that squire! What an idea it was! Only to expose myself to insolence!'

But in Darya Mihailovna's house something extraordinary had been
happening. The lady herself did not appear the whole morning, and did
not come in to dinner; she had a headache, declared Pandalevsky, the
only person who had been admitted to her room. Natalya, too, Rudin
scarcely got a glimpse of: she sat in her room with Mlle. Boncourt When
she met him at the dinner-table she looked at him so mournfully that
his heart sank. Her face was changed as though a load of sorrow had
descended upon her since the day before. Rudin began to be oppressed by
a vague presentiment of trouble. In order to distract his mind in some
way he occupied himself with Bassistoff, had much conversation with him,
and found him an ardent, eager lad, full of enthusiastic hopes and still
untarnished faith. In the evening Darya Mihailovna appeared for a couple
of hours in the drawing-room. She was polite to Rudin, but kept him
somehow at a distance, and smiled and frowned, talking through her nose,
and in hints more than ever. Everything about her had the air of