Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume IV).djvu/337

 flirting or something. In a word, let us be friends as before. That was a dream, wasn't it? And who remembers dreams?'

'Who remembers them? And besides, love ... you know, is a purely imaginary feeling.'

'Really? I am very glad to hear that.'

So Anna Sergyevna spoke, and so spoke Bazarov; they both supposed they were speaking the truth. Was the truth, the whole truth, to be found in their words? They could not themselves have said, and much less could the author. But a conversation followed between them precisely as though they completely believed one another.

Anna Sergyevna asked Bazarov, among other things, what he had been doing at the Kirsanovs'. He was on the point of telling her about his duel with Pavel Petrovitch, but he checked himself with the thought that she might imagine he was trying to make himself interesting, and answered that he had been at work all the time.

'And I,' observed Anna Sergyevna, 'had a fit of depression at first, goodness knows why; I even made plans for going abroad, fancy!... Then it passed off, your friend Arkady Nikolaitch came, and I fell back into my old routine, and took up my real part again.'

'What part is that, may I ask?'

'The character of aunt, guardian, mother—