"H-m! and did you miss me?" asks Lensky, harshly, quite repellantly, and looks at his son sideways, mistrustfully.
"Very much!" replied Nikolai.
Lensky had not expected that; the short, simple words went deep to his heart. He changed color, rose, walked up and down a number of times, and at length remained standing before Nikolai, and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"I know that I was in the wrong," says he, in a changed, indescribably gentle voice. "I do not deserve any children such as you are. If you had both turned out quite badly, I still could not have wondered. But you have but another's blood in your veins, and--and--" [....than you] and lays his hand over his eyes, then he [...e her, a ...] foot. "I have neglected you, that is true [... ..u] must not imagine--" Again he pauses, [...] after awhile he continues: "As regards Mascha, God knows I should like to have my little lark about me, but with me it is really somewhat different than with--well, with Kasin. Kasin has his brilliant position and lives in St. Petersburg; but I--to-day I am in Paris, to-morrow in Berlin, the next day in Vienna. How, then, can I take a young girl about with me?"
"Is it, then, necessary that you should still so torment yourself?" remarks Nikolai gently, quite pleadingly.
Lensky is silent.
And Nikolai, who, in spite of his early knowledge of life, is still an inexperienced idealist, thinks he has persuaded his father, hopes to win him entirely to the plan laid out for him. "You could certainly settle down now," says he. "I have planned that so finely. You could have an old relative, Marie Dimitrievna, for instance, mamma's cousin, who is sympathetic to you, to keep house for you; and under the united influence of your fame and Mascha's charm, your home in St. Petersburg or Moscow would become a true paradise. You could be so gay and happy, so petted and honored in your old age, if you only would not grudge yourself rest!"
"Not grudge myself rest?" groaned Lensky. "Yes, if I could [en.. ...] rest." And with a gesture peculiar to him, [...] this back his thick hair with both hands from h[...] and [...], he adds: "Ask what you will of me, [only ...rer dev...] I should sit still; that I can do no more [..." ...bli...] is silent for awhile, then, with hoarse, hollow voice, as if in a dream, he begins anew: "Yes, if they had left me your mother, perhaps it would have been different; just at that time, before our separation, I began to be weary of the dancing-bear life: with her, I perhaps could have led a respectable old age. But you knew better what was suited to her than she herself. You pointed out to her what would never have occurred to her of herself, poor angel!--that it was a shame to have patience with me. Please yourself with the result! You have killed her and me. But of what use to bring up again the old grief, what use to reproach others? It is all my fault. Now nothing can be changed. I am what I am; I can no longer subdue myself. I cannot be without women and applause," says he, brutally. "Be as horrified as you will, I cannot, I cannot. I will some time die with my bow in my hand, and can be happy if I am not hissed before that!"
His breath fails him. He is silent. They stand opposite each other, father and son, gazing into each other's eyes. Never before has Nikolai seen a face which expresses a more incurable sadness. Why does he understand now, just now, in spite of the inconsolable confession which his father has just made to him, the unescapable charm which he exercises on all men not fish-blooded?
Something of his thoughts are mirrored in his features. The polite mask has disappeared, and for the first time Lensky feels that it is his own flesh and blood that stands before him; for the first time he sees not only a young diplomat, dressed in the most correct English style, but his son, and in the features of the grown young man he finds something of the dear little face of the boy who used to spring joyfully out to meet him when he came home, who was so proud if he could show his father the slightest service, who boasted so imposingly to his playmates of his father's fame. He thinks of the tall, pale youth whose ideal he was until the day when Nikolai began to understand, and his bright eyes suddenly saddened with the hardest suffering that a young man can experience, the pain of being obliged to see a flaw in the one who is highest to him.