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'You'll never be in love, then?'

'And you? Don't I love you?' she said, and she flicked love

Yes, Zina&iuely at my expense For three weeks I saw her every day, and what didn't she do with me! She rarely came to see us, and I was not sorry for it; in our house she was transfor princess, and I was a little overawed by her I was afraid of betraying reat dislike to Zinaïda, and kept a hostile eye upon us My father I was not so much afraid of; he seemed not to notice me He talked little to her, but alith special cleverness and significance I gave up working and reading; I even gave up walking about the neighbourhood and riding , I e I would gladly have stopped there altogether, it seemedbut that was impossible My mother scolded me, and sometimes Zinaïda herself drove o down to the very end of the garden, and clireenhouse, now in ruins, sit for hours with azing and gazing and seeing nothing White butterflies flitted lazily by me, over the dusty nettles; a saucy sparrow settled not far off on the half cru red brickwork and twittered irritably, incessantly twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still h up on the bare top of a birch-tree; the sun and wind played softly on its pliant branches; the tinkle of the bells of the Don monastery floated across to azed, listened, and was filled full of a nameless sensation in which all was contained: sadness and joy and the foretaste of the future, and the desire and dread of life But at that tiiven a na at random within me, or should have called it all by one name--the name of Zinaïda

Zinaïda continued to play cat and itation and rapture; then she would suddenly thrust o near her--dared not look at her