He had plunged a dagger in her heart, but her whole tenderness is awakened.
She bends over him, strokes his rough hair with her tender, white hand. "My poor genius!" she whispers gently. "My poor, dear genius!"
"Papa!" calls a silvery voice, joyfully. "Pa--pa!" he repeats, hesitatingly, frightened. Kolia has run up.
If he lives to be a hundred years old he will never forget how he saw his father sobbing at his mother's feet after the first long separation.
Then he did not understand, but later he understood--understood only too well.
How sad life is: how sad!
* * * * * *
It was the morning after his arrival. Lensky stood at the window of his room, and looked down in the quiet garden. The little brook which tumbled down the hill at the side of the Hermitage with exaggerated violence, quite like a little waterfall, in front of the house from whence Lensky looked down on it, plashed quite calmly, earnestly, and dreamily along its here scarcely susceptibly descending bed, and bore away on its dark waves only as much of the sunshine as could reach it between the lindens. A cool breeze rose from the water, all around was dark green, dewy and luxuriant--luxuriant without the slightest indication of decay, without the least trace of approaching withering.
And what an abundance of roses stood out in gay, blooming colors against the sober, dark-green background! Great Maréchal Niel roses, with heavy, earthward-bent heads, dark-red Jacqueminot, fiery Baroness Rothschild, delicate pink, capriciously crumpled La France. The Gloire de Dijon roses climbed quite in the window of his room in their race with the quite small, pert little running roses.
Light steps crunched the gravel, large and small steps. Natalie stepped out from the shady lindens in front of the house. She held her little daughter in her arms. Kolia walked near her, and with the important earnestness of six years carried a basketful of strawberries, which he had evidently just helped his mother pick. One could think of nothing more charming than the young woman in her white morning-dress, with its lilac ribbons, and the tiny, rosy being in her arms. The little thing was bareheaded, and her little arms and feet were also bare. She quivered and danced with animation. There she discovered a butterfly, cried out gayly, and clapped her little hands.