Raisky could hardly control his rage. “And a stupid girl like that thinks that I am in love with her,” he thought. “She has not the remotest conception of manners.” In offering the wager, Mark had stirred up all the bitterness latent in him. He hardly looked at Vera when he sat opposite her at dinner. If he happened to raise his eyes, it was as if he were dazed by a flash of lightning. Once or twice she had looked at him in a kind, almost affectionate way, but his wild glance betrayed to her the agitation, of which she deemed herself to be the cause, and to avoid meeting his eyes she bent her head over her empty plate.
“After dinner, I shall drive with Marfinka to the hay harvest,” said Tatiana Markovna to Raisky. “Will you bestow on your meadows the honour of your presence, Sir?”
“I have no inclination to go,” he murmured.
“Does the world go so hard with you?” asked Tatiana Markovna. “You are indeed weighed down with work.”
He looked at Vera, who was mixing red wine with water. She emptied her glass, rose, kissed her aunt’s hand, and went out.
Raisky too rose, and went to his room. His aunt, Marfinka, and Vikentev, who had just happened to turn up, drove to the hay harvest, and the afternoon peace soon reigned over the house. One man crawled into the hayrick, another in the outhouse, another slept in the family carriage itself, while others took advantage of the mistress’s absence to go into the outskirts of the town.
Raisky’s thoughts were filled with Vera. Although he had sworn to himself to think of her no more, he could not conquer his thoughts. Where was she? He would go to her and talk it all over. He was inspired only with curiosity, he assured himself. He took his cap and hurried out. Vera was neither in the room nor in the old house; he searched for her in vain on the field, in the vegetable garden, in the thicket on the cliff, and went to look for her down along the bank of the Volga. When he found no one he turned homewards, and suddenly came across her a few steps from him, not far from the house.
“Ah!” he cried, “there you are. I have been hunting for you everywhere.”
“And I have been waiting for you here,” she returned.
He felt as if he were suddenly enveloped in winter in the soft airs of the South.