"Then let me go and meet her," exclaimed Arkady with another access of "magnanimity" as he sprang from his chair. "Yes, let me go and explain to her why she need not shun me."
Nikolai Petrovitch also rose.
"Arkady," he began, "pray do me a favour. Hitherto I had not warned you that——"
But, without listening to him, Arkady darted from the terrace. For a moment or two Nikolai Petrovitch gazed after him—then, overcome with confusion, relapsed into a chair. His heart was beating rapidly. Whether or not he was picturing to himself a strangeness of future relations with his son; whether he was imagining that, had his son refrained from interfering, the latter might have paid him more respect in future; whether he was reproaching himself for his own weakness—it is difficult to say what his thoughts were. Probably in them there was a combination of the feelings just indicated, if only in the form of apprehensions. Yet those apprehensions cannot have been deeply rooted, as was proved by the fact that, for all the beating of his heart, the colour had not left his face.
Soon hasty footsteps were heard approaching, and Arkady reappeared on the terrace.
"I have made her acquaintance!" he shouted with a kindly, good-humoured, triumphant expression. "That Theodosia Nikolaievna is not well to-day is a fact; but also it is a fact that she is going to appear later. And why did you not tell me that I had a little brother? Otherwise I should have gone and kissed him last night, even as I have done this moment."
Nikolai Petrovitch tried to say something—to rise and to make an explanation of some sort; but Arkady cut him short by falling upon his neck.
"What is this? Again embracing?" said Paul Petrovitch behind them.
As a matter of fact, neither father nor son was ill-pleased to see him appear, for, however touching such situations may be, one may be equally glad to escape from them.
"At what are you surprised?" asked Nikolai Petrovitch gaily. "Remember that I have not seen Arkesha for several centuries—at all events, not since last night!"