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You're not well, Masha. 'My head does ache a little, said Masha, to find some way of escape. 'There, I knew it. Nenila Makarievna put some scent on Masha's forehead. 'You're not feverish, though. Masha stooped down, and picked a thread off the floor. Nenila Makarievna's arms lay softly round Masha's slender waist.
Lutchkov looked round him irresolutely. 'I can't now... 'Why not? 'I should like to speak to you... alone.... 'Why, we are alone now. 'Yes... but... here in the house.... Masha was at her wits' end.... 'If I refuse, she thought, 'it's all over.... Curiosity was the ruin of Eve.... 'I agree, she said at last. 'When then? Where? Masha's breathing came quickly and unevenly.
The idea of the duel with Lutchkov was almost pleasant to him.... Once get free from the past, leap over this rock in his path, and then to float on an untroubled tide... 'Good, he thought, 'I shall be fighting to win my happiness. Masha's image seemed to smile to him, to promise him success. 'I'm not going to be killed! not I! he repeated with a serene smile.
'Yes, he said at last, almost aloud; 'she loves him: I will bring them together; I will justify her confidence in me. Though there was as yet nothing to prove a definite passion for Lutchkov on Masha's part, though, according to her own account, he only excited her curiosity, Kister had by this time made up a complete romance, and worked out his own duty in the matter.
He had taken her fancy, according to Panteley Eremyitch, simply by constantly curling his moustaches, pomading himself to excess, and sniggering significantly; but one must suppose that the vagrant gypsy blood in Masha's veins had more to do with it. However that may have been, one fine summer evening Masha tied up a few odds and ends in a small bundle, and walked out of Tchertop-hanov's house.
Such was the mark left upon my consciousness by the idea of sacrificing my feelings to Masha's happiness, seeing that she believed that she could attain it only through a union with Basil. PERHAPS people will scarcely believe me when I tell them what were the dearest, most constant, objects of my reflections during my boyhood, so little did those objects consort with my age and position.
So that with Masha's death my father was deprived of this natural source of warmth, which, with advancing years, had become more and more of a necessity for him. Another and still greater power that she possessed was her remarkably delicate and sensitive conscience. This trait in her was still dearer to my father than her caresses. How good she was at smoothing away all misunderstandings!
At the end of March at Masha's wish, she was appointed guardian of the Kurilovka school, and at the beginning of April we three times summoned the village assembly, and tried to persuade the peasants that their school was old and overcrowded, and that it was essential to build a new one.
His health had begun to fail two years before his death: he began to suffer from asthma, and was constantly dropping asleep, and on waking up could not at once come to himself; the district doctor maintained that this was the result of 'something rather like fits. During the three days which preceded Masha's departure, those three days when 'her heart was heavy, Nedopyuskin had been away at his own place at Bezselendyevka: he had been laid up with a severe cold.
Sophia's breathing and the faint mutter of old Másha's prayers mingled with the wailing of the wind as it rushed round the corner of the house, and the pelt of freezing rain on the windows. In the half-lighted room no one either moved or spoke. Minutes passed. Half an hour. Ivan, standing on his feet, grew desperately nervous and weary.
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