ction is very easy.'

'How can one help prizing oneself? If I am of no value, who could need
my devotion?'

'That's not my affair; that's the other's business to discover what is
my value. The chief thing is to be able to devote oneself.'

Madame Odintsov bent forward from the back of her chair. 'You speak,'
she began, 'as though you had experienced all that.'

'It happened to come up, Anna Sergyevna; all that, as you know, is not
in my line.'

'But you could devote yourself?'

'I don't know. I shouldn't like to boast.'

Madame Odintsov said nothing, and Bazarov was mute. The sounds of the
piano floated up to them from the drawing-room.

'How is it Katya is playing so late?' observed Madame Odintsov.

Bazarov got up. 'Yes, it is really late now; it's time for you to go to
bed.'

'Wait a little; why are you in a hurry?... I want to say one word to
you.'

'What is it?'

'Wait a little,' whispered Madame Odintsov. Her eyes rested on Bazarov;
it seemed as though she were examining him attentively.

He walked across the room, then suddenly went up to her, hurriedly said
'Good-bye,' squeezed her hand so that she almost screamed, and was
gone. She raised her crushed fingers to her lips, breathed on them, and
suddenly, impulsively getting up from her low chair, she moved with
rapid steps towards the door, as though she wished to bring Bazarov
back.... A maid came into the room with a decanter on a silver tray.
Madame Odintsov stood still, told her she could go, and sat down again,
and again sank into thought. Her hair slipped loose and fell in a dark
coil down her shoulders. Long after the lamp was still burning in Anna
Sergyevna's room, and for long she stayed without moving, only from
time to time chafing her hands, which ached a little from the cold of
the night.

Bazarov went back two hours later to his bed-room with his boots wet
with dew, dishevelled and ill-humoured. He found Arkady at the
writing-table with a book in his hands, his coat buttoned up to the
throat.

'You're not in bed yet?' he said, in a tone, it seemed, of annoyance.

'You stopped a long while with Anna Sergyevna this evening,' remarked
Arkady, not answering him.

'Yes, I stopped with her all the while you were playing the piano with
Katya Sergyevna.'

'I did not play ...' Arkady began, and he stopped. He felt the tears
were coming into his eyes, and he did not like to cry before his
sarcastic friend.

CHAPTER XVIII