She fell silent. Victor fingered his steel watch-chain.
“Akulina, you are not a foolish girl,” he said at last, “therefore don’t talk nonsense. It’s for your own good, do you understand me? Of course, you are not foolish, you’re not altogether a peasant, so to say, and your mother wasn’t always a peasant either. Still, you are without education—therefore you must obey when you are told to.”
“But it’s terrible, Victor Alexandrich.”
“Oh, what nonsense, my dear—what is she afraid of! What is that you have there,” he added, moving close to her, “flowers?”
“Flowers,” replied Akulina sadly. “I have picked some field tansies,” she went on, with some animation. “They’re good for the calves, And here I have some marigolds—for scrofula. Here, look, what a pretty flower! I haven’t seen such a pretty flower in all my life. Here are forget-me-nots, and—and these I have picked for you,” she added, taking from under the tansies a small bunch of cornflowers, tied around with a thin blade of grass; “do you want them?”
Victor held out his hand lazily, took the flowers, smelt them carelessly, and began to turn them around in his fingers, looking up with thoughtful importance. Akulina gazed at him. There was so much tender devotion, reverent obedience, and love in her pensive eyes. She at once feared him, and yet she dared not cry, and inwardly she bade him farewell, and admired him for the last time; and he lay there, stretched out like a sultan, and endured her admiration with magnanimous patience and condescension. I confess I was filled with indignation as I looked at his red face, which betrayed satisfied selfishness through his feigned contempt and indifference. Akulina was so beautiful at this moment. All her soul opened before him trustingly and passionately;—it reached out to him, caressed him, and he—He dropped the cornflowers on the grass, took out from the side-pocket of his coat a round glass in a bronze frame and began to force it into his eye; but no matter how hard he tried to hold it with his knitted brow, his raised cheek, and even with his nose, the glass dropped out and fell into his hands.
“What’s this?” asked Akulina at last, with surprise.
“A lorgnette,” he replied importantly.
“What is it for?”
“To see better.”