Madame Odintsov walked up and down the room. By turns her face flushed and grew pale. 'You think so,' she said. 'Well, I see no obstacles ... I am glad for Katya ... and for Arkady Nikolaevitch too. Of course, I will wait for his father's answer. I will send him in person to him. But it turns out, you see, that I was right yesterday when I told you we were both old people.... How was it I saw nothing? That's what amazes me!' Anna Sergyevna laughed again, and quickly turned her head away.
'The younger generation have grown awfully sly,' remarked Bazarov, and he too laughed. 'Good-bye,' he began again after a short silence. 'I hope you will bring the matter to the most satisfactory conclusion; and I will rejoice from a distance.'
Madame Odintsov turned quickly to him. 'You are not going away? Why should you not stay now? Stay ... it's exciting talking to you ... one seems walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one feels timid, but one gains courage as one goes on. Do stay.'
'Thanks for the suggestion, Anna Sergyevna, and for your flattering opinion of my conversational talents. But I think I have already been moving too long in a sphere which is not my own. Flying fishes can hold out for a time in the air; but soon they must splash back into the water; allow me, too, to paddle in my own element.'
Madame Odintsov looked at Bazarov. His pale face was twitching with a bitter smile. 'This man did love me!' she thought, and she felt pity for him, and held out her hand to him with sympathy.
But he too understood her. 'No!' he said, stepping back a pace. 'I'm a poor man, but I've never taken charity so far. Good-bye, and good luck to you.'
'I am certain we are not seeing each other for the last time,' Anna Sergyevna declared with an unconscious gesture.
'Anything may happen!' answered Bazarov, and he bowed and went away.
'So you are thinking of making yourself a nest?' he said the same day to Arkady, as he packed his box, crouching on the floor. 'Well, it's a capital thing. But you needn't have been such a humbug. I expected something from you in quite another quarter. Perhaps, though, it took you by surprise yourself?'
'I certainly didn't expect this when I parted from you,' answered Arkady; 'but why are you a humbug yourself, calling it "a capital thing," as though I didn't know your opinion of marriage.'