not succeeded in
effacing the memory of Madame Odintsov. On the third day he told Arkady
that he could stand it no longer.

"I am bored; I want to work, but I can't work here. I will come to your
place again; I have left all my apparatus there, too. In your house one
can, at any rate, shut oneself up; while here my father repeats to me,
'My study is at your disposal--nobody shall interfere with you,' and all
the time he himself is never a yard away. It's the same thing, too, with
mother. I hear her sighing the other side of the wall, and if one goes
in to her, one's nothing to say to her."

Vassily Ivanovitch was dumbfounded when he broke the news to him.

"Very good..." he faltered, "very good.... I had thought you were to be
with us... a little longer. Three days.... After three years, it's
rather little; rather little, Yevgeny!"

"But I tell you I'm coming back directly. It's necessary for me to go."

"Necessary.... Very good. Arina and I, of course, did not anticipate
this. She has just begged some flowers from a neighbour; she meant to
decorate the room for you. Liberty... is the great thing; that's my
rule.... I don't want to hamper you... not..."

He suddenly ceased and rushed from the room. He had to tell his old
wife; that was the trying task that lay before him. She was utterly
crushed, and only a two-hour exhortation from her husband enabled her to
control herself until her son's departure. When at last he was gone she
broke down. Vassily Ivanovitch bent his grey head against her grey head.

"There's no hope for it," she moaned. "Only I am left you, unchanged for
ever, as you for me."

_III.--The Duel_

The two friends journeyed as far as X---- together. There Arkady left
his companion in order to see Katya. Bazaroff, determined to cure
himself of his passion for Madame Odintsov, made the rest of the journey
alone, and took up his quarters once more in the house of Nicolai
Petrovitch.

The fact of Arkady's absence did not tend to improve matters between
Pavel Petrovitch and Bazaroff. After a week the aristocrat's antipathy
passed all bounds. That night he knocked at Bazaroff's door, and,
gaining admittance, begged in his most delicate manner for five minutes'
conversation.

"I want to hear your views on the subject of duelling," he said.
Bazaroff, for once, was taken by surprise.

"My view is," he said at last, "that I should not, in practice, allow
myself to be insulted without demanding