he
could not shield herself, spread a slight flush over her cheeks and
ears, and, shedding a soft indolence over her whole body, was reflected
in a dreamy languor in her pretty eyes. She was almost unable to work;
her hands seem to fall naturally into her lap. She scarcely walked at
all, and was constantly sighing and complaining with comic
helplessness.

'You should go oftener to bathe,' Nikolai Petrovitch told her. He had
made a large bath covered in with an awning in one of his ponds which
had not yet quite disappeared.

'Oh, Nikolai Petrovitch! But by the time one gets to the pond, one's
utterly dead, and, coming back, one's dead again. You see, there's no
shade in the garden.'

'That's true, there's no shade,' replied Nikolai Petrovitch, rubbing
his forehead.

One day at seven o'clock in the morning Bazarov, returning from a walk,
came upon Fenitchka in the lilac arbour, which was long past flowering,
but was still thick and green. She was sitting on the garden seat, and
had as usual thrown a white kerchief over her head; near her lay a
whole heap of red and white roses still wet with dew. He said good
morning to her.

'Ah! Yevgeny Vassilyitch!' she said, and lifted the edge of her
kerchief a little to look at him, in doing which her arm was left bare
to the elbow.

'What are you doing here?' said Bazarov, sitting down beside her. 'Are
you making a nosegay?'

'Yes, for the table at lunch. Nikolai Petrovitch likes it.'

'But it's a long while yet to lunch time. What a heap of flowers!'

'I gathered them now, for it will be hot then, and one can't go out.
One can only just breathe now. I feel quite weak with the heat. I'm
really afraid whether I'm not going to be ill.'

'What an idea! Let me feel your pulse.' Bazarov took her hand, felt for
the evenly-beating pulse, but did not even begin to count its throbs.
'You'll live a hundred years!' he said, dropping her hand.

'Ah, God forbid!' she cried.

'Why? Don't you want a long life?'

'Well, but a hundred years! There was an old woman near us eighty-five
years old--and what a martyr she was! Dirty and deaf and bent and
coughing all the time; nothing but a burden to herself. That's a
dreadful life!'

'So it's better to be young?'

'Well, isn't it?'

'But why is it better? Tell me!'

'How can you ask why? Why, here I now, while I'm young, I can do
everything--go and come and carry, and needn't ask any one for
anything.... What can be better?'