But he had to go to the house, come what might. He walked three times up and down the avenue, grew a little calmer, and went into the house.
"Why didn't you come in in time for tea?" Madame Shumihin asked sternly.
"I am sorry, it's ... it's time for me to go," he muttered, not raising his eyes. "Maman, it's eight o'clock!"
"You go alone, my dear," said his maman languidly. "I am staying the night with Lili. Goodbye, my dear.... Let me make the sign of the cross over you."
She made the sign of the cross over her son, and said in French, turning to Nyuta:
"He's rather like Lermontov ... isn't he?"
Saying good-bye after a fashion, without looking any one in the face, Volodya went out of the dining-room. Ten minutes later he was walking along the road to the station, and was glad of it. Now he felt neither frightened nor ashamed; he breathed freely and easily.
About half a mile from the station, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road, and gazed at the sun, which was half hidden behind a barrow. There were lights already here and there at the station, and one green light glimmered dimly, but the train was not yet in sight. It was pleasant to Volodya to sit still without moving, and to watch the evening coming little by little. The darkness of the arbour, the footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, the laughter, and the waist—all these rose with amazing vividness before his imagination, and all this was no longer so terrible and important as before.
"It's of no consequence.... She did not pull her hand away, and laughed when I held her by the waist," he thought. "So she must have liked it. If she had disliked it she would have been angry...."
And now Volodya felt sorry that he had not had more boldness there in the arbour. He felt sorry that he was so stupidly going away, and he was by now persuaded that if the same thing happened again he would be bolder and look at it more simply.