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RUDIN stopped. His supplicating voice seemed to make her waver.

‘No,’ she uttered at last. ‘I feel that something in me is broken. I came here, I have been talking to you as if it were in delirium; I must try to recollect. It must not be, you yourself said, it will not be. Good God, when I came out here, I mentally took a farewell of my home, of my past—and what? whom have I met here?—a coward and how did you know I was not able to bear a separation from my family? “Your mother will not consent It is terrible!” That was all I heard from you, that you, you, Rudin?—No! good-bye. Ah! if you had loved me, I should have felt it now, at this moment. No, no, goodbye!’

She turned swiftly and ran towards Masha, who had begun to be uneasy and had been making signs to her a long while.

‘It is you who are afraid, not I!’ cried Rudin after Natalya.

She paid no attention to him, and hastened homewards across the fields. She succeeded in getting back to her bedroom; but she had 175