‘Why, you know, Volodya, one can’t leave the words out of a song,’ answered Evlampia, and she turned and saw me. We both cried out aloud at once, and both rushed away in opposite directions.
I made my way hurriedly out of the copse, and crossing a narrow clearing, found myself facing Harlov’s garden.
XX
I had no time, nor would it have been of any use, to deliberate over what I had seen. Only an expression kept recurring to my mind, ‘love spell,’ which I had lately heard, and over the signification of which I had pondered a good deal. I walked alongside the garden fence, and in a few moments, behind the silver poplars (they had not yet lost a single leaf, and the foliage was luxuriantly thick and brilliantly glistening), I saw the yard and two little lodges of Martin Petrovitch’s homestead. The whole place struck me as having been tidied up and pulled into shape. On every side one could perceive traces of unflagging and severe supervision. Anna Martinovna came out on to the steps, and screwing up her blue-grey eyes, gazed for a long while in the direction of the copse.
‘Have you seen the master?’ she asked a peasant, who was walking across the yard.
‘Vladimir Vassilitch?’ responded the latter, taking his cap off. ‘He went into the copse, surely.’
‘I know, he went to the copse. Hasn’t he come back? Haven’t you seen him?’
‘I’ve not seen him … nay.’
The peasant continued standing bareheaded before Anna Martinovna.