“Oh, I haven’t the heart to pick it,” she said, staying her hand and cooing to the strawberry as she would to a baby: “Won’t touch you, berry darling. Won’t touch you, sweetie.”
“Spare its life then,” he answered, “I’ll see if I can’t find others.”
And sure enough, after some seeking and peeping and climbing, Pavel came upon a spot that was fairly jewelled with strawberries.
“Quite a haul,” he shouted down.
She joined him and they went on picking together, each with a thistle leaf for a saucer.
“Why, it’s literally teeming with them,” she said, in a preoccupied voice, deeply absorbed in her work. “One, two, three, and four, and—seven; why, bless me,—and eight and nine. What a pity we have nothing with us. We could get enough to treat the crowd at Orlovsky’s.”
Pavel made no reply. Whenever he came across a berry that looked particularly tempting he would offer it to her silently and resume his work. He was oppressively aware of his embarrassment in her presence and the consciousness of it made him feel all the more so. He was distinctly conscious of a sensation of unrest, both stimulating and numbing, which had settled in him since he made her acquaintance. It was at once torture and joy, yet when he asked himself which of the two it was, it seemed to be neither the one nor the other. Her absence was darkness; her presence was light, but pain and pleasure mingled in both. It made him feel like a wounded bird, like a mutely suffering child. At this moment it blent with the flavour and ruddiness of the berries they were both picking, with the pine-breeze that was waiting on them, with the subdued lyrics of spring.
And he knew that he was in love.
He had never been touched by more than a first timid whisper of that feeling before. It was Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St. Petersburg, whose image had formerly—quite recently, in fact—invaded his soul. He had learned immediately that she belonged to Zachar and his dawning love had been frightened away. Otherwise his life during these five years had been one continuous infatuation of quite another kind—the infatuation of moral awakening, of a political religion, of the battlefield.