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 admiring her. As he looked at her he recalled all the pleasant remarks he had heard her make, all the goodness that he had found in her, and he confessed to himself more and more that the feeling which she aroused in him was something peculiar, like what he had experienced once, only long, long before, in his early youth.

The feeling of pleasure at being near her kept growing stronger, and at last when, as he put into her basket a monstrous birch mushroom with thin stem and edges, he looked into her eyes, and, noticing the blush of pleasure and timid emotion which spread over her face, he himself grew confused, and smiled with a mute smile which said too much.

"If this is the way it is going, I must deliberate and come to a decision, and not give way like a child to the impulse of a moment."

"I am going now to hunt for mushrooms independently of the rest of you, otherwise my acquisitions will not be noticed," said he; and he went off by himself from the edge of the woods, where they had been walking along the velvety turf among the old birch trees, scattered here and there in the forest together with the gray trunks of aspens and dark clumps of hazelnuts. Going off forty steps or so, and coming to a clump of the bush called beresklet, which was in full flower with its rosy catkins, Sergyeï Ivanovitch sheltered himself behind it, knowing that he would not be seen.

Around him it was perfectly still. Only up in the tree-tops above his head, ceaseless, like a swarm of bees, buzzed the flies, and occasionally he heard the voices of the children. Suddenly, not far from the edge of the woods, rang out Varenka's contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a happy smile spread over Sergyeï Ivanovitch's face. When he realized what he was doing, he shook his head disapprovingly at his state of mind, and, taking out a cigar, he began to smoke.

It was some time before he could light a match against the bole of a birch tree. The juicy scales of the white bark dampened the phosphorus, and the match refused to burn. At last one of the matches took fire, and the