es. Tears do not always bring relief.
They are comforting and salutary when, after being long pent up in the
breast, they flow at last--at first with violence, and then more easily,
more softly; the dumb agony of sorrow is over with the tears. ... But
there are cold tears, tears that flow sparingly, wrung out drop by drop
from the heart by the immovable, weary weight of pain laid upon it: they
are not comforting, and bring no relief. Poverty weeps such tears; and
the man has not yet been unhappy who has not shed them. Natalya knew
them on that day.

Two hours passed. Natalya pulled herself together, got up, wiped her
eyes, and, lighting a candle, she burnt Rudin's letter in the flame, and
threw the ash out of window. Then she opened Pushkin at random, and
read the first lines that met her. (She often made it her oracle in this
way.) This is what she saw:

'When he has known its pang, for him
The torturing ghost of days that are no more,
For him no more illusion, but remorse
And memory's serpent gnawing at his heart.'

She stopped, and with a cold smile looked at herself in the glass,
slightly nodded her head, and went down to the drawing-room.

Darya Mihailovna, directly she saw her, called her into her study, made
her sit near her, and caressingly stroked her cheek. Meanwhile she gazed
attentively, almost with curiosity, into her eyes. Darya Mihailovna was
secretly perplexed; for the first time it struck her that she did not
really understand her daughter. When she had heard from Pandalevsky of
her meeting with Rudin, she was not so much displeased as amazed that
her sensible Natalya could resolve upon such a step. But when she had
sent for her, and fell to upbraiding her--not at all as one would
have expected from a lady of European renown, but with loud and vulgar
abuse--Natalya's firm replies, and the resolution of her looks and
movements, had confused and even intimidated her.

Rudin's sudden, and wholly unexplained, departure had taken a great load
off her heart, but she had expected tears, and hysterics.... Natalya's
outward composure threw her out of her reckoning again.

'Well, child,' began Darya Mihailovna, 'how are you to-day?' Natalya
looked at her mother. 'He is gone, you see... your hero. Do you know why
he decided on going so quickly?'

'Mamma!' said Natalya in a low voice, 'I give you my word, if you will
not mention him, you shall never hear his name from me.'

'Then you acknowledge h