“You take too gloomy a view of the matter,” observed Saksaoolov, with a smile.
“You ought to take him to yourself,” Valeria Mikhailovna advised him.
“I?” asked Saksaoolov with astonishment.
“You are living alone,” Valeria Mikhailovna persisted. “You have no one. Here’s a chance for you to do a good deed at Eastertime! At least, you’ll have some one with whom to exchange the kiss of Easter.”
“I beg you to tell me, Valeria Mikhailovna, what am I to do with a child?”
“You might engage a governess. Fate itself is sending the boy to you.”
Saksaoolov looked with amazement and involuntary tenderness at the girl’s flushed, animated face.
When Tamar again appeared to him that evening he seemed already to know her wish. It was as though, in the silence of the room, he heard her tranquilly spoken words: “Do as she advised you.”
Saksaoolov rose joyously and rubbed his drowsy eyes with his hand. He saw a sprig of white lilac on the table, and was astonished. How did it come there? Did Tamar leave it there as a sign of her wish?
And he suddenly thought that if he married the Gorodischeva girl and took Lesha into his house he would be carrying out the will of Tamar. He breathed in the lilac’s aroma happily. He suddenly remembered that he himself had bought the sprig of lilac that same day.