“To-morrow?” uttered the girl, and fixed a frightened look upon him.
“To-morrow.—Come, come, come, please,” he replied quickly, vexed, noticing that she quivered, and bowed her head in silence. “Please, Akulina, don’t cry. You know I can’t bear it” (and he twitched his flat nose). “If you don’t stop, I’ll leave you right away. What nonsense—to whimper!”
“Well, I shan’t, I shan’t,” said Akulina hastily, swallowing the tears with an effort. “So you’re going away to-morrow?” she added, after a brief silence. “When will it please God to have me meet you again, Victor Alexandrovich?”
“We’ll meet, we’ll meet again. If it isn’t next year, it’ll be later. My master, it seems, wants to enter the service in St. Petersburg,” he went on, pronouncing the words carelessly and somewhat indistinctly. “And it may be that we’ll go abroad.”
“You will forget me, Victor Alexandrovich,” said Akulina sadly.
“No—why should I? I’ll not forget you, only you had rather be sensible; don’t make a fool of yourself; obey your father.—And I’ll not forget you.—Oh, no; oh, no.” And he stretched himself calmly and yawned again.
“Do not forget me, Victor Alexandrovich,” she resumed in a beseeching voice. “I have loved you so much, it seems—all, it seems, for you.—You tell me to obey father, Victor Alexandrovich.—How am I to obey my father—?”
“How’s that?” He pronounced these words as if from the stomach, lying on his back and holding his hands under his head.
“Why, Victor Alexandrovich—you know it yourself—”
She fell silent. Victor fingered his steel watch-chain.