"You have grounds for that surmise, yet I say that you are wrong."
But Arkady proved to be right, for Anna Sergievna really desired to see Bazarov, and, through the butler, sent him word to that effect. After tidying his costume, therefore, and tucking his new great-coat under his arm (in readiness to depart as soon as the interview should be concluded), he went downstairs, and was received, not in the room where he had unexpectedly disclosed his passion, but in the drawing-room. Anna Sergievna's manner, as she offered him the tips of her fingers, was pleasant enough, yet her face betrayed involuntary tension.
"To begin with," Bazarov hastened to say, "allow me to reassure you. You see before you a corpse which has long returned to its senses, and is also not destitute of hope that others have forgotten its folly. I am unlikely to see you again for an extended period, but, though (as you know) I am not given to sentiment, I feel that I should like to bear away with me the thought that my image still fills your mind with aversion."
She caught at her breath like a person who has just arrived at the summit of a lofty mountain. Then her face lightened into a smile, and, offering Bazarov her hand a second time, she allowed it to respond to the pressure of his.
"When sorrow is asleep, do not wake it," she said. "And the less so since my conscience convicts me, if not of coquetry on that occasion, at all events of something else. One word more. Let us be friends again. For it was all a dream, was it not? And who remembers dreams?"
"Who indeed? And love—well, love is a mere empirical sentiment."
"I am glad to hear you say so."
Thus Anna Sergievna, and thus Bazarov. And both conceived themselves to be speaking the truth. But was it the truth?—at all events, the whole truth? The speakers themselves did not know, and therefore the author does not. Nevertheless both the man and the woman framed their words to create an atmosphere of mutual confidence.
Next Anna Sergievna asked Bazarov how he had spent his time at the Kirsanovs'; and though he came within an ace of telling her of the duel with Paul Petrovitch, he checked himself in time, and replied that he had been engaged in work.
"And I," she said, "have been, for some unknown reason, out of humour, and meditating going abroad; but the fit is passing now (thanks to the arrival of your friend Arkady Nikolaievitch), and already I find myself relapsing into my old rut, and resuming my true rôle."