Bazarov rose. The lamp was casting a dim light, while into the fragrant, darkened, isolated room there came wafted at intervals, under the swinging blind, the sensuous freshness of the night, and the sounds of its mysterious whisperings. Madame Odintsov did not stir. Over her was stealing the same strange agitation which had infected Bazarov. Suddenly he realised that he was alone with a young and beautiful woman.
"Need you go?" she asked slowly.
He made no reply—he merely resumed his seat.
"Then you think me a spoilt, pampered, indolent person?" she continued in the same slow tone as she fixed her eyes upon the window. "Yet this much I know about myself: that I am very unhappy."
"Unhappy? For what reason? Because you attach too much importance to petty slanders?"
She frowned. Somehow she felt vexed that he should have understood her thus.
"No; things of that kind do not disturb me," she said. "Never should I allow them to do so—I am too proud. The reason why I am unhappy is that I have no wish, no enthusiasm, to live. I daresay you will not believe me, and will think that a mere 'petty aristocrat,' a person who is lapped in lace and seated in an armchair, is saying all this (and I will not conceal from you that I love what you call 'the comforts of life'): yet all the while I feel as though I had no desire to continue my existence. Pray reconcile that contradiction if you can. But perhaps you consider what I say 'Romanticism'?"
Bazarov shook his head.
"You are yet young," he said. "Also, you are rich and independent. What more could you have? What more do you desire?"
"What more?" she re-echoed with a sigh. "I do not know. I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time. Yes, I am growing old," she continued as she drew the ends of her mantilla around her bare shoulders. In doing so, she glanced at Bazarov. Her eyes met his, and the faintest of blushes stole into her face. "Behind me lie many memories—memories of my life in St. Petersburg, of a period of wealth followed by poverty, of my father's death, of my marriage, of my travels abroad—yes, many such memories there are. Yet none of them are worth cherishing. And before me lies only a weary road with no goal to it, along which I have no desire to travel."