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At the gate with the lions on it Genya was standing motionless, waiting to escort me. "Every one is asleep in the village," I said to her, trying to make out her face in the darkness, and I saw her mournful dark eyes fixed upon me. "The publican and the horse-stealers are asleep, while we, well-bred people, argue and irritate each other."
Genya thought that I, as an artist, knew a great deal and could guess what I did not know. She wanted me to lead her into the region of the eternal and the beautiful, into the highest world, with which, as she thought, I was perfectly familiar, and she talked to me of God, of eternal life, of the miraculous.
All these tiny details I remember with tenderness, and that whole day I remember vividly, though nothing special happened. After dinner Genya lay in a long arm-chair reading, while I sat upon the bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The whole sky was overcast with clouds, and it began to spot with fine rain. It was hot; the wind had dropped, and it seemed as though the day would never end.
I loved Genya, and she must have loved me, because she used to meet me and walk with me, and because she looked at me with tender admiration. How thrillingly beautiful her pale face was, her thin nose, her arms, her slenderness, her idleness, her constant reading. And her mind?
"Missyuss, go away," said Lyda to her sister, evidently thinking my words dangerous to so young a girl. Genya looked sadly at her sister and mother and went out. "People generally talk like that," said Lyda, "when they want to excuse their indifference. It is easier to deny hospitals and schools than to come and teach." "True, Lyda, true," her mother agreed.
These intellectuals who have risen from the people are morbidly sensitive, obstinate and slow to forgive. "It's bad, it's bad," muttered Rashevitch, spitting; he had a feeling of discomfort and loathing as though he had eaten soap. "Ah, it's bad!" He could see from the garden, through the drawing-room window, Genya by the piano, very pale, and looking scared, with her hair down.
Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes. "How incomprehensible that is!" she said. At that minute Lida had just returned from somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand, a slim, beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, she was giving some orders to one of the men.
Genya liked me as a painter, I had conquered her heart by my talent, and I longed passionately to paint only for her, and I dreamed of her as my little queen, who would one day possess with me the trees, the fields, the river, the dawn, all Nature, wonderful and fascinating, with whom, as with them, I have felt helpless and useless. "Stay with me a moment longer," I called. "I implore you."
But tell me" Genya touched my sleeve with her finger "but tell me, why do you argue with her all the time? Why are you so irritated?" "Because she is not right." Genya shook her head and tears came to her eyes. "How incomprehensible!" she muttered.
"He is the chairman of the council and all the jobs in the district are given to his nephews and brothers-in-law, and he does exactly as he likes. We ought to fight him. The young people ought to form a strong party; but you see what our young men are like. It is a shame, Piotr Petrovich." The younger sister, Genya, was silent during the conversation about the Zemstvo.
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