Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/50

Rh The good old lady came twice to his locked door, put her ear to the keyhole, and only sighed and murmured her prayer. 'It has begun!' she thought. . . . 'And he only five-and-twenty! Ah, it 's early, it's early!'

VIII All the following day Aratov was in very low spirits. 'What is it, Yasha?' Platonida Ivanovna said to him: 'you seem somehow all loose ends to-day ! ' . . . In her own peculiar idiom the old lady's expression described fairly accurately Aratov's mental condition. He could not work and he did not know himself what he wanted. At one time he was eagerly on the watch for Kupfer, again he suspected that it was from Kupfer that Clara had got his address. . . and from where else could she 'have heard so much about him'? Then he wondered: was it possible his acquaintance with her was to end like this? Then he fancied she would write to him again; then he asked himself whether he ought not to write her a letter, explaining everything, since he did not at all like leaving an unfavourable impression of himself. . . But exactly what to explain? Then he