Thus day followed day. Yet, though Bazarov devoted himself wholly to work, there was one person in the house whom he did not hold at arm's length, but was always willing to talk to. That person was Thenichka. Mostly he encountered her in the early mornings, when she was walking in the garden or the courtyard; but never did he enter her room, nor did she ever come to his door, save once, for the purpose of asking him to help her with Mitia's bath. And she not only trusted Bazarov; she also held him in no awe, and allowed herself more freedom in his presence than she did in that of Nikolai Petrovitch himself. The reason is difficult to determine. Perhaps it was the fact that unconsciously she detected in Bazarov none of the dvorianin element, none of that superiority which at once attracts and repels; the young Nihilist, to her, was just a clever doctor, and no more. At all events, she was so free from shyness in his presence that she would dandle her child unabashed, and, on one occasion, when seized with a headache, went so far as to accept at his hands a spoonful of medicine. True, in Nikolai Petrovitch's presence she seemed to shun Bazarov; but this was done more out of a sense of decorum than through subtlety. As for Paul Petrovitch, she feared him as much as ever, for he had taken to watching her with a keen, steady eye, and to making his appearance behind her as though his figure, clad in its inevitable English suit, and posed in its usual attitude of hands in trousers pockets, had suddenly sprung from the floor. "Whenever I see him I feel cold all over," once she complained to Duniasha; whereupon that maiden's thoughts reverted longingly to another "unfeeling" individual who had, all unwittingly, come to be "the cruel tyrant" of her heart.
Thenichka, therefore, liked Bazarov, and Bazarov liked Thenichka. Indeed, no sooner did he speak to her than his face would undergo a change, and, assuming a bright, almost a good-humoured, expression, exchange its habitual superciliousness for something like playful solicitude. Meanwhile she grew more beautiful daily. In the lives of young women there is a season when they begin to unfold and bloom like the roses in summer: and to that period Thenichka had just come. Everything, even the July heat then prevalent, contributed to it. Dressed in a gown of some light white material, she looked even lighter and whiter than it; and though she escaped actual sunburn, the heated air imparted to her cheeks and ears a faint tan, and, permeating her frame with gentle indolence, imbued her exquisite eyes with dreamy languor. No longer could she do any work; she could only let her hands sink upon her lap, and there remain. Seldom going even for a stroll, she spent the most of her time in a state of gently querulous and panting, but not distasteful, inertia.
"You should go and bathe as often as you can," Nikolai Petrovitch said to her one day (he had had a large, canopied bathing-place constructed in one of the last few ponds on the estate).
"Ah!" she gasped. "Even to walk to the pond half-kills me: and to walk back from it half-kills me again. There is no shade in the garden, you see."
"True," he agreed, wiping his forehead.
At seven o'clock one morning, when Bazarov was returning from a walk, he encountered Thenichka in the midst of a lilac clump which, though past the season of flowering, was still green and leafy. As usual, she had a white scarf thrown over her head, and beside the bench on which she was sitting there was a bunch of red and white roses with the dew yet glistening on their petals. He bade her good morning.
"It is you, then, Evgenii Vasilitch!" she exclaimed as she put aside a corner of her scarf to look at him—a movement which bared her arm to the elbow.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he seated himself beside her. "Is it a nosegay you are making?"
"Yes, for the breakfast table. Nikolai Petrovitch is so fond of such things."
"But breakfast is not yet. What a waste of flowers!"