“Do you care for music?”
She looked at him inquiringly before she said, “Does that mean that I play myself, or like to hear music?”
“Both.”
“I don’t play, but I like to hear music, but what music is there here?”
“But what are your particular tastes?” Again she looked at him inquiringly. “Do you like housekeeping, or needlework. Do you do embroidery?”
“No, Marfinka likes and understands all those things.”
“But what do you like? A book only occupies you for a short time. You say that you don’t do any needlework, but you must like something, flowers perhaps.”
“Flowers, yes, in the garden, but not in the house where they have to be tended. I love this corner of God’s earth, the Volga, the precipice, the forest and the garden—these are the things I love,” she said, looking contentedly at the prospect from the window.
“What ties bind you to this little place?”
She gave no answer, but her eyes wandered lovingly over the trees and the rising ground, and finally rested on the dazzling mirror of water.