Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/201

Rh feeling has played a secondary part─though we are united for ever. In the name of the cause? Yes, in the name of the cause!'

So fancied Nezhdanov, and he did not suspect how much of truth, and how much of falsehood, there was in his fancies.

He found Markelov in the same weary and morose frame of mind. They dined after a fashion, and then set off in the same old coach (they hired from a peasant a second trace-horse, a colt, who had never been in harness before─Markelov's horse was still lame) to the merchant Faleyev's big cotton factory, where Solomin lived. Nezhdanov's curiosity was aroused; he felt eager to make a closer acquaintance with a man of whom he had heard so much of late. Solomin was prepared for their visit; when the two travellers stopped at the gates of the factory and gave their names, they were promptly conducted into the unsightly little lodge occupied by the 'superintendent of the machinery.' He was himself in the chief wing of the building; while one of the workmen ran to fetch him, Nezhdanov and Markelov had time to go to the window and look about them. The factory was apparently in a flourishing condition and overburdened with work; from every side came