Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/129

Rh ceiling, after a brief silence, in an undertone as though speaking to herself, she queried, 'How ever did he draw a portrait of me? From memory?'

Nezhdanov turned quickly to her.

'Yes, from memory.'

Marianna was amazed at his answering. It seemed to her that she had merely thought the question.

'It is astonishing ' she went on in the same subdued voice; 'why, he has no talent for drawing. What was I going to say?' she resumed aloud; 'oh, about Dobrolyubov's poem. One ought to write poems like Pushkin's, or such as that one of Dobrolyubov's: this is not poetry though it's something as good.'

'And poems like mine,' said Nezhdanov, 'ought not to be written at all? Eh?'

'Poems like yours please your friends not because they are very fine, but because you are a fine person, and they are like you.'

Nezhdanov smiled.

'You have buried them, and me with them!'

Marianna gave him a slap on his hand and told him he was too bad. Soon after she announced that she was tired and was going to bed.

'By the way, do you know,' she added,