"How have you contrived so quickly to appraise me? To begin with, I am both impatient and exacting. Ask Katia if I am not. Also, I am easily moved to impulse."
Bazarov darted a glance at her.
"Possibly," he said. "Certainly you ought to know best. But, since you desire to argue, let us argue. While looking at those views of Saxon Switzerland, I heard you remark that they could not interest me. This you said, I presume, because you suppose me to be lacking in the artistic sense. Well, I am so. But might not those pictures be interesting to me solely from the geological point of view—from the standpoint of an observer, say, of the formation of mountains?"
"Pardon me, but, as a geologist, you would prefer to resort to some special work on that science, not to a few pictures."
"Oh, not necessarily. For a picture may instantly present what a book could set forth only in a hundred pages."
Anna Sergievna made no reply.
"Well," she resumed, leaning forward upon the table—a movement which brought her face closer to Bazarov's, "since you possess not a grain of the artistic instinct, how do you contrive to get on without it?"
"Rather, I would ask you: What is the artistic instinct able to effect?"
"It is able at least to help one to examine and to instruct one's fellow man."
Bazarov smiled.