ishes can hold
out for a time in the air, but soon they must splash back into the
water; allow me, too, to paddle in my own element."

Madame Odintsov looked at Bazaroff. His pale face was twitching with a
bitter smile. "This man did love me!" she thought, and she felt pity for
him, and held out her hand to him with sympathy.

He, too, understood her. "No!" he said, stepping back a pace. "I am a
poor man, but I have never taken charity so far. Good-bye and good luck
to you."

"I am certain we are not seeing each other for the last time," she
declared, with an unconscious gesture.

"Anything may happen!" answered Bazaroff, and he bowed and went away.

_IV.--The Passing of Bazaroff_

Bazaroff's old parents were all the more overjoyed at their son's
arrival, as it was quite unexpected. His mother was greatly excited and
his father, touching his neck with his fingers, turned his head round as
though he were trying whether it were properly screwed on, and then, all
at once, he opened his wide mouth and went off into a perfectly
noiseless chuckle.

"I've come to you for six whole weeks, governor," Bazaroff said to him.
"I want to work, so please don't hinder me now."

But though his father and mother almost effaced themselves, scarcely
daring to ask him a question, even to discover what he would like for
dinner, the fever of work fell away. It was replaced by dreary boredom
or vague restlessness. He began to seek the society of his father and to
smoke with him in silence. Now and again he even assisted at some of the
medical operations which his father conducted as a charity. Once he
pulled a tooth out from a pedlar's head, and Vassily Ivanovitch never
ceased boasting about the extraordinary feat.

One day in a neighbouring village, the news was brought them that a
peasant had died of typhus. Three days later Bazaroff came into his
father's room and asked him if he had any caustic to burn a cut in his
finger.

"What sort of a cut? where is it?"

"Here, on my finger. I have been dissecting that peasant who died of
typhus fever."

Vassily Ivanovitch suddenly turned quite white. All that day he watched
his son's face stealthily. On the third day Bazaroff could not touch his
food.

"Have you no appetite? And your head?" he at last asked, timidly; "does
it ache?"

"Yes, of course it aches."

"Don't be angry, please," continued Vassily Ivanovitch. "Won't you let
me feel your pulse?"

Bazaroff got up. "I c