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At this moment Vassilissa Igorofna appeared on the ramparts, followed by Marya, who had not wished to leave her. "Well," said the Commandant's wife, "how goes the battle? Where is the enemy?" "The enemy is not far," replied Iván Kouzmitch; "but if God wills all will be well. And you, Masha, are you afraid?" "No, papa," replied Marya, "I am more frightened alone in the house."
She embraced and kissed Masha, and, not knowing how to express her rapture, said to her of me: "He is good! He is very good!" Before she went away she changed into her ordinary dress, and drew me into the garden to talk to me alone. "Father is very much hurt," she said, "that you have written nothing to him. You ought to have asked for his blessing. But in reality he is very much pleased.
I involuntarily drew back a step when I saw the engineer, but he held out both hands to me and said, smiling, showing his strong white teeth that looked like a sledge-driver's: "Here he is, here he is! Very glad to see you, Mr. House-painter! Masha has told me all about it; she has been singing your praises. I quite understand and approve," he went on, taking my arm.
We used to have tea together and cook porridge, or sit together for hours in silence thinking the rain would never stop. Once when Stiepan went away to a fair, Masha stayed the night in the mill.
When Anna Akimovna had promised to give Masha a dowry, he had hesitated for a time; but once a poor student in a brown overcoat over his uniform, coming with a letter for Anna Akimovna, was fascinated by Masha, and could not resist embracing her near the hat-stand, and she had uttered a faint shriek; Mishenka, standing on the stairs above, had seen this, and from that time had begun to cherish a feeling of disgust for Masha.
"'Bhishma said, "Listen to me, O Yudhishthira, what those Havis are which persons conversant with the ritual of the Sraddha regard as suitable in view of the Sraddha and what the fruits are that attach to each. With sesame seeds and rice and barley and Masha and water and roots and fruits, if given at Sraddhas, the Pitris, O king, remain gratified for the period of a month.
"I so much hoped that he would settle down here; it would just have suited him. And it was his own idea, too; he had even taken a cottage in the village," Aunt Masha sadly recalled. "When he left me to go back to the hotel where he was staying, it seemed to me that he was rather calmer. "When he said good-by, he even made some joke about his having come to the wrong door.
My new position excited in him a mixed feeling of wonder, envy, and a vague hope that something of the same sort might happen to him. He used to watch Masha with ecstatic eyes, ask me what I had for dinner now, and his lean and ugly face wore a sad and sweetish expression, and he moved his fingers as though he were feeling my happiness with them.
I looked after him and watched him walk away across the wet, thawing snow with his short, quick old man's steps, turning his toes out at a sharp angle, as he always did, and never once looking round. My sister Masha had held a position of great importance in my father's life and in the life of the whole family.
"So that was the 'Ilyusha," I thought, and I sank into philosophic reflections which I will not, however, intrude upon you as I don't want to prevent anyone from believing in fate, predestination and such like. When I was back in Petersburg I made inquiries about Masha. I even discovered the doctor who had treated her.
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