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"How can you go away?" complained Leonti. "And the books " "What books?" "Your books. See for yourself by the catalogue that they are all right." "I have made you a present of them." "Be serious for a moment. Where shall I send them?" "Goodbye. I have no time to spare. Don't come to me with the books, or I will burn them. And you, wise man, who can tell a lover by his face, farewell.
"Grandmother is very angry, and is grumbling...." "I was with Leonti," returned Raisky indifferently. "I thought so, and told Grandmother so, but she won't listen and will hardly speak even to Tiet Nikonich. He is with her now and Paulina Karpovna too. Go to Grandmother, and it will be all right. Are you afraid. Does your heart beat fast?" Raisky had to laugh. "She is very angry.
"Yes, we will have dinner outside," said Leonti. "Serve what there is, Ulinka. Come, Boris, now we can talk." Then as an idea struck him, he added, "What shall you have to say to me about the library?" "About what library? You wrote to me about it, but I did not understand what you were talking about. I think you said some person called Mark, had been tearing the books."
Raisky glanced through it. "Destroy it," he said. "You will have no peace while it is in your possession." "Destroy it!" said Leonti, seizing the letter, and replacing it in the desk. "How is it possible to think of such a thing, when these are the only lines she has written me, and these are all that I have as a souvenir?" "Leonti!
Just as if she had not made scandal enough. Poor Leonti! I will go to him, how sorry I am for him." "Yes, Borushka, I am sorry for him too, and should like to have gone to see him. He has the simple honesty of a child. God has given him learning, but no common sense, and he is buried in his books. I wonder who is looking after him now.
He ought to have been glad to hear this news, but he heard it with a spasm of pain. When he entered his aunt's room she sent Pashutka out and locked the door. "How anxiously I have been expecting you!" she said. "I wanted to send a messenger for you." "What is the matter?" he exclaimed, pale with terror in fear of bad news of Vera. "Your friend Leonti Ivanovich is ill." "Poor fellow!
Raisky stayed in his rooms in the new house, but Leonti had returned to his own home for the time being, to return to Malinovka after the departure of Tatiana Markovna and Vera. He, too, had been invited by Tushin to "Smoke," but Leonti had answered with a sigh, "Later in the winter. Just now I am expecting...." and had broken off to look out on to the road from Moscow.
She used to call Leonti her fiance, without any denial on his part, and five years after he had left the University he made the journey to Moscow, and married her. He loved his wife as a man loves air and warmth; absorbed in the life and art of the ancients, his lover's eyes saw in her the antique ideal of beauty.
"What the devil have I to do with your gratitude? I am not here for that, but on Koslov's account." "God be with you and your manners, Mark Ivanovich!" replied Raisky. "In any case, you have done a good deed." "More praise. You can be as sentimental as you like for all I care...." "I will take Leonti home with me," resumed Raisky.
Not another word about the books. Only on that condition, I don't send them to the Gymnasium. Now let us sit down to table, or I shall go to my Grandmother's, for I am famished." "Do you intend to spend your whole life like this?" asked Raisky as he was sitting after dinner alone with Leonti in the study. "Yes, what more do I need?"
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