"Why not?" he thought. "If it were only a passing fancy or a

passion, if it were only this attraction--this mutual attraction

(I can call it a _mutual_ attraction), but if I felt that it was

in contradiction with the whole bent of my life--if I felt that

in giving way to this attraction I should be false to my vocation

and my duty...but it's not so. The only thing I can say

against it is that, when I lost Marie, I said to myself that I

would remain faithful to her memory. That's the only thing I can

say against my feeling.... That's a great thing," Sergey

Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this

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consideration had not the slightest importance for him

personally, but would only perhaps detract from his romantic

character in the eyes of others. "But apart from that, however

much I searched, I should never find anything to say against my

feeling. If I were choosing by considerations of suitability

alone, I could not have found anything better."

However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could

not think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively

all, the qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all

the charm and freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if

she loved him, she loved him consciously as a woman ought to

love; that was one thing. Another point: she was not only far

from being worldly, but had an unmistakable distaste for worldly

society, and at the same time she knew the world, and had all the

ways of a woman of the best society, which were absolutely

essential to Sergey Ivanovitch's conception of the woman who was

to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and not like a

child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for example,

was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in

trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he

wanted in his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she

would not bring with her a mass of relations and their influence

into her husband's house, as he saw now in Kitty's case. She

would owe everything to her husband, which was what he had always

desired too for his future family life. And this girl, who

united all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest man, but

he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There was one

consideration against it--his age. But he came of a long-lived

family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken

him for forty, and he remembered Varenka's saying that it was

only in Russia that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that

in France a man of fifty considers himself _dans la force de

l'âge_, while a man of forty is _un jeune homme_. But what did

the mere reckoning of years matter when he felt as young in heart

as he had been twenty years ago? Was it not youth to feel as he

felt now, when coming from the other side to the edge of the wood

he saw in the glowing light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious

figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her basket, walking

lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when this

impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with

the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in

the slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest

flecked with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance?

His heart throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him.

He felt that he had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just

crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and

looked round. Flinging away the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch

advanced with resolute steps towards her.




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