The house was early astir to bid Raisky Godspeed. Tushin and the young Vikentevs had come, Marfinka, a marvel of beauty, amiability and shyness. Tatiana Markovna looked sad, but she pulled herself together and avoided sentiment.
“Stay with us,” she said reproachfully. “You do not even know, yourself, where you are going.”
“To Rome, Grandmother.”
“What for? To see the Pope?”
“To be a sculptor.”
“Wha-at?”
Marfinka also begged him to stay. Vera did not add her voice to the request, because she knew he would not stay; she thought sorrowfully that his manifold talents had not developed so far to give the pleasure they should do to himself and others.
“Cousin,” she said, “if ever you grow weary of your existence abroad, will you come back to glance at this place where you are now at last understood and loved?”
“Certainly I will, Vera. My heart has found a real home here. Grandmother, Marfinka and you are my dear family; I shall never form new domestic ties. You will always be present with me wherever I go, but now do not seek to detain me. My imagination drives me away, and my head is whirling with ideas, but in less than a year I shall have completed a statue of you in marble.”
“What about the novel?” she asked, laughing.