'He was afraid to go away in the night, while she was lying with her throat cut!' said Fédka; 'I should have run away!' and he gathered my two fingers yet more closely in his hand.
We stopped in the thicket, beyond the threshing-floor at the very end of the village. Syómka picked up a dry stick from the snow and began striking it against the frosty trunk of a lime tree. Hoar frost fell from the branches on to one's cap, and the noise of the blows resounded in the stillness of the wood.
'Lyóf Nikoláyevitch,' said Fédka to me (I thought he was going again to speak about the Countess), 'why does one learn singing? I often think, why, really, does one?'
What made him jump from the terror of the murder to this question, heaven only knows; yet by the tone of his voice, the seriousness with which he demanded an answer, and the attentive silence of the other two, one felt that there was some vital and legitimate connection between this question and our preceding talk. Whether the connection lay in some response to my suggestion that crime might be explained by lack of education (I had spoken of that) or whether he was testing himself—transferring himself into the mind of the murderer and remembering his own favourite occupation (he has a wonderful voice and immense musical talent) or whether the connection lay in the fact that he felt that now was the time for sincere conversation, and all the problems demanding solution rose in his mind—at any rate his question surprised none of us.
'And what is drawing for? And why write well?' said I, not knowing at all how to explain to him what art is for.
'What is drawing for?' repeated he thoughtfully. He really was asking, What is Art for? And I neither dared nor could explain.
'What is drawing for?' said Syómka. 'Why, you draw anything, and can then make it from the drawing.'
'No, that is designing,' said Fédka. 'But why draw figures?'
Syómka's matter-of-fact mind was not perplexed.
'What is a stick for, and what is a lime tree for?' said he, still striking the tree.