XXV
In the shade of a tall ash tree in the garden at Nikolsköe Katia and Arkady were seated on a bench. Beside them, on the ground, lay Fifi—his lengthy body twisted into the curve known to sporting folk as "the hare's crouch." Neither from Arkady nor from Katia was a word proceeding. Arkady was holding in his hands a half-opened book, and she was picking a few crumbs from a basket, and throwing them to a small family of sparrows which, with the timid temerity of their tribe, were chirping and hopping at her very feet. A faint breeze was stirring the leaves of the ash tree, and dappling Fifi's tawny back and the dark line of the pathway with a number of wavering circles of pale golden light; but Arkady and Katia were wholly in shade, save that an occasional streak glanced upon, and gleamed in, her hair. Just for the reason that the pair were silent and side by side was there present to their consciousness a camaraderie which, while causing neither to have the other definitely in mind, pleased each with the sense of the other's propinquity. The expression of both is changed since last we saw them. Arkady's face wears a staider air, and Katia looks more animated and less retiring.
At length, however, Arkady spoke.
"Do you not think," he said, "that our Russian term yasen is particularly suitable to the ash tree? For no other tree cleaves the air with such airy brightness."[1] Katia looked up.
"I agree," she replied, while Arkady proudly reflected: "At all events she does not reprove me for talking in 'beautiful language.'"
"By the way," Katia continued with a glance at the book in his hands, "I cannot say that I always approve of Heine. I like him neither when he is laughing nor when he is in tears—I like him only when he is meditative and languid."
"Well, I like him when he is laughing," Arkady remarked.
"Then still there survives in you a trace of your old satirical tendency. Still your reformation needs to be completed."
"Indeed?" thought Arkady. "My satirical tendency? Oh, that Bazarov could have heard that!"
While aloud he said: