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Silin was not listening, but sat musing with his head propped on his fists. The church stood at the end of the street on the high river-bank, and through the trellis gate of the enclosure we could see the river, the water-meadows on the near side of it, and the crimson glare of a camp fire about which black figures of men and horses were moving.
Was it a result of the peaceful country life, the summer, the fresh air, dainty food, beautiful home, or was it due to the fact that for the first time in his life he was tasting the sweetness of contact with a woman's soul? It would be difficult to say. But he felt happy, although he complained, and quite sincerely, to his friend Silin. The mood, however, was abruptly destroyed in a single day.
He told her about Vassily Nikolaevitch's letters, everything even about Silin! He spoke hurriedly, without a single pause or the smallest hesitation, as if he were reproaching himself for not having entrusted her with all his secrets before as if he were begging her pardon. She listened to him attentively, greedily; she was bewildered at first, but this feeling soon wore off.
As for the factory men, Nejdanov could not get hold of them at all; these fellows were either too sharp or too gloomy. He wrote a long letter to his friend Silin about the whole thing, in which he bitterly regretted his incapacity, putting it down to the vile education he had received and to his hopelessly aesthetic nature!
Valentina Mihailovna had looked at him intently several times during dinner, but there had been no opportunity of speaking to him. Mariana, after the unexpected freak which had so bewildered him, was evidently repenting of it, and seemed to avoid him. Nejdanov took up a pen to write to his friend Silin, but he did not know what to say to him.
"Some fellow called Silin sought me out; Nejdanov, it seems, had left a letter for him too. Well, he wanted to know if Alexai had left any papers, but we hunted through all his things and found nothing. He must have burned everything, even his poems. Did you know that he wrote verses? I'm sorry they were destroyed; there must have been some good things among them.
"No," said he: "I was born at Llan Silin, a place some way off across the Berwyn." "Llan Silin?" said I, "I have a great desire to visit it some day or other." "Why so?" said he, "it offers nothing interesting." "I beg your pardon," said I; "unless I am much mistaken, the tomb of the great poet Huw Morris is in Llan Silin churchyard." "Is it possible that you have ever heard of Huw Morris?"
At eight o'clock, after dinner, Nejdanov was sitting in his room writing to his friend Silin. "MY DEAR VLADIMIR, I write to you at a critical moment of my life. I have been dismissed from this house, I am going away from here. That in itself would be nothing I am not going alone. The girl I wrote to you about is coming with me.
He did not interest himself in politics, but read anything that came in his way, played on the flute as a resource against boredom, and was afraid of young ladies. Silin was passionately fond of Nejdanov he had an affectionate heart in general.
The miller's hospitality in Mona brought tears to his eyes; so did his own verse translation of the "Ode to Sycharth," because it made him think "how much more happy, innocent and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I translated Iolo's ode than I am at the present time." He kissed the silver cup at Llanddewi Brefi and the tombstone of Huw Morus at Llan Silin.
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