"What do you say, father?" inquired she.
"Your age, the brilliant position in which you have lived since childhood—and this disenchantment."
"Just this brilliant position, father—just because of this brilliant position, perhaps. We are not talking of me, however—but because of this, which in me you call disenchantment, I am able to understand mamma's wish to leave society, all the more because, if I were in her position, all homage, show, luxury, amusements would for me be as impossible as they are for her. This depends on character. Moreover, mamma remembers that everything which she uses is yours, and the use of it attended by your contempt, and the evident impossibility of ever coming to any understanding is such a poison—so I beg you to give me Krynichna. I am your daughter, and, as it seems to me, you have no thought of disinheriting me, so if I own Krynichna, mamma will live with me and receive everything from me alone."
Her voice grew weaker, and her posture less constrained, in her whole form there was an expression of suffering. Everything which she said cost her, in spite of appearances to the contrary, much effort and suffering. Darvid was silent a while, then he said:
"It seems to me that I am Ali Baba, listening to the tales of Sheherazade. If I should agree to your plan what would you do there?"
"I do not know clearly as yet. This is mamma's idea; her wish; she will discover more and tell me. We will examine; we shall see. Into mamma's plans, besides quiet obscurity, and modesty of life, labor enters also."
She spoke in a low, wearied voice:
"An idyl!" laughed Darvid.
"An idyl, father; I used to laugh at all idyls without knowing that I had one in myself. It has saved me from many, and, perhaps, dreadful things. Yes, I have an idyl: I love mamma."
Then her thin lips, famous in society for their precocious, bitter irony, quivered as do those of children when preparing to cry.