"Really?" said Annouchka. "Well, then, as he is going, give him the flower. I will come home very soon."
She quickly closed the window, and I thought I saw her embrace the old German. Gaguine offered me the flower in silence. Without saying a word I put it in my pocket, and returning to the place where they cross the river, I passed over to the other side. I recollect walking towards my house with a singularly sad heart, though thinking of nothing, when a perfume well known to me, but rare enough in Germany, attracted my attention. I stopped, and saw near the road a plot of ground sown with hemp. The perfume that this plant of the steppes gave out suddenly transported me to Russia, and brought forth in my soul a passionate enthusiasm towards my country; I conceived the ardent desire of breathing my native air, and feeling again under my feet the soil of my fatherland. "What am I doing here?" I exclaimed; "What interest have I in wandering in a strange land, among people who are nothing to me?" and the oppression that filled my heart soon gave way to an emotion violent and full of bitterness.
I re-entered my house in a state of mind the opposite to that of the night before; I felt almost vexed, and was long in calming myself. I felt a deep vexation, for which I could not account. I ended by sitting down, and recalling my faithless widow (she came to my recollection officially every evening); I took one of her letters, but did not open it, for my thoughts took wing to the other side of the river. I began to dream, and Annouchka was the subject. I recalled that in the course of our conversation; Gaguine gave me to understand that certain circumstances prevented him from returning to Russia.—"Who knows, indeed, if she is his sister," I asked myself aloud.
I laid down and tried to sleep, but an hour after I was still leaning on my elbow, and thinking again of that capricious little girl with a forced laugh. She has the figure of La Galathée of Raphael of the Farnese palace, I murmured.—It is well that—and she is not his sister. During this time the widow's letter reposed quietly upon the floor, lighted up by a pale ray of the moon.
V.
The next morning I returned to L. I persuaded myself that I should take the greatest pleasure in seeing Gaguine, but the fact is that I was secretly impelled by the desire of knowing how Annouchka would behave,—if she would act as strangely as the night before. I found them both in the parlor; and a singular thing,—but perhaps because I had been dreaming so long of Russia,—Annouchka seemed to me entirely Russian. I found in her the air of a young girl of the people, almost that of one of the servants. She wore quite an old dress, her hair was drawn back behind her ears, and, seated near the window, she was quietly working at her embroidery, as if she had never done anything else in her life. Her eyes fixed upon her work, she scarcely spoke, and her features had an expression so dull, so commonplace, that I was involuntarily reminded of Macha and Katia[2] at home. To complete the resemblance she began to hum the air,—
O, ma mère, ma douce Colombe![3]
While observing her face, the dreams of the night before came back to mind, and without knowing why, I felt an oppression in my heart. The weather was magnificent.
Gaguine told us he intended to go out to sketch. I asked permission to accompany him if it would not trouble him.