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He left the same day, calling at Madame Odintsov's house on his way home to see Arkady. He found his friend engaged to Katya and in the seventh heaven of delight. Madame Odintsov would have had him stay. "Why should you not stay now?" she said. "Stay... it's exciting talking to you... one seems walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one feels timid, but one gains courage as one goes on.
Meanwhile Bazarov was not altogether mistaken. He had struck Madame Odintsov's imagination; he interested her, she thought a great deal about him.
'Turn to the left, shouted Arkady. The coach rolled away in the direction of Nikolskoe. But having resolved on the folly, the friends were even more obstinately silent than before, and seemed positively ill-humoured. Directly the steward met them on the steps of Madame Odintsov's house, the friends could perceive that they had acted injudiciously in giving way so suddenly to a passing impulse.
Great as was Madame Odintsov's self-control, and superior as she was to every kind of prejudice, she felt awkward when she went into the dining-room to dinner. The meal went off fairly successfully, however. Porfiry Platonovitch made his appearance and told various anecdotes; he had just come back from the town.
But his timidity and agitation did not last long; Madame Odintsov's tranquillity gained upon him too; before a quarter of an hour had passed he was telling her freely about his father, his uncle, his life in Petersburg and in the country.
Time, it is well known, sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a worm; but man is wont to be particularly happy when he does not even notice whether it passes quickly or slowly. It was in that way Arkady and Bazarov spent a fortnight at Madame Odintsov's. The good order she had established in her house and in her life partly contributed to this result.
Arina Vlasyevna sat on a low stool near the door, and only went out from time to time to pray. A few days before, a looking-glass had slipped out of her hands and been broken, and this she had always considered an omen of evil; even Anfisushka could say nothing to her. Timofeitch had gone off to Madame Odintsov's. The night passed badly for Bazarov.... He was in the agonies of high fever.
The road to the right led to the town, and from there home; the road to the left led to Madame Odintsov's. He looked at Bazarov. 'Yevgeny, he queried; 'to the left? Bazarov turned away. 'What folly is this? he muttered. 'I know it's folly, answered Arkady.... 'But what does that matter? It's not the first time. Bazarov pulled his cap down over his brows. 'As you choose, he said at last.
In conversation with his father one day, he found out that Nikolai Petrovitch had in his possession rather interesting letters, written by Madame Odintsov's mother to his wife, and he gave him no rest till he got hold of the letters, for which Nikolai Petrovitch had to rummage in twenty drawers and boxes.
Bazarov grumbled, but the very reason life was so easy for him and Arkady at Madame Odintsov's was that everything in the house 'moved on rails. For all that, a change had taken place in both the young men since the first days of their stay at Nikolskoe.
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