'Anna Sergyevna,' Bazarov hastened to say, 'before everything else I
must set your mind at rest. Before you is a poor mortal, who has come
to his senses long ago, and hopes other people too have forgotten his
follies. I am going away for a long while; and though, as you will
allow, I'm by no means a very soft creature, it would be anything but
cheerful for me to carry away with me the idea that you remember me
with repugnance.'

Anna Sergyevna gave a deep sigh like one who has just climbed up a high
mountain, and her face was lighted up by a smile. She held out her hand
a second time to Bazarov, and responded to his pressure.

'Let bygones be bygones,' she said. 'I am all the readier to do so
because, speaking from my conscience, I was to blame then too for
flirting or something. In a word, let us be friends as before. That was
a dream, wasn't it? And who remembers dreams?'

'Who remembers them? And besides, love ... you know, is a purely
imaginary feeling.'

'Really? I am very glad to hear that.'

So Anna Sergyevna spoke, and so spoke Bazarov; they both supposed they
were speaking the truth. Was the truth, the whole truth, to be found in
their words? They could not themselves have said, and much less could
the author. But a conversation followed between them precisely as
though they completely believed one another.

Anna Sergyevna asked Bazarov, among other things, what he had been
doing at the Kirsanovs'. He was on the point of telling her about his
duel with Pavel Petrovitch, but he checked himself with the thought
that she might imagine he was trying to make himself interesting, and
answered that he had been at work all the time.

'And I,' observed Anna Sergyevna, 'had a fit of depression at first,
goodness knows why; I even made plans for going abroad, fancy!... Then
it passed off, your friend Arkady Nikolaitch came, and I fell back into
my old routine, and took up my real part again.'

'What part is that, may I ask?'

'The character of aunt, guardian, mother--call it what you like. By the
way, do you know I used not quite to understand your close friendship
with Arkady Nikolaitch; I thought him rather insignificant. But now I
have come to know him better, and to see that he is clever.... And he's
young, he's young ... that's the great thing ... not like you and me,
Yevgeny Vassilyitch.'

'Is he still as shy in your company?' queried Bazarov.

'Why, was he?' ... Anna Sergyevna began, and after a bri