om.

'I did not want to shock you at all, Alexandra Pavlovna,' he brought
out at last, 'I am not given to slander. However,' he added, after a
moment's thought, 'in reality there is a foundation of fact in what you
said. I did not mean to slander Rudin; but--who knows! very likely he
has had time to change since those days--very possibly I am unjust to
him.'

'Ah! you see. So promise me that you will renew your acquaintance with
him, and will get to know him thoroughly and then report your final
opinion of him to me.'

'As you please. But why are you so quiet, Sergei Pavlitch?'

Volintsev started and raised his head, as though he had just waked up.

'What can I say? I don't know him. Besides, my head aches to-day.'

'Yes, you look rather pale this evening,' remarked Alexandra Pavlovna;
'are you unwell?'

'My head aches,' repeated Volintsev, and he went away.

Alexandra Pavlovna and Lezhnyov looked after him, and exchanged glances,
though they said nothing. What was passing in Volintsev's heart was no
mystery to either of them.

VI

More than two months had passed; during the whole of that period Rudin
had scarcely been away from Darya Mihailovna's house. She could not
get on without him. To talk to him about herself and to listen to his
eloquence became a necessity for her. He would have taken his leave on
one occasion, on the ground that all his money was spent; she gave
him five hundred roubles. He borrowed two hundred roubles more from
Volintsev. Pigasov visited Darya Mihailovna much less frequently than
before; Rudin crushed him by his presence. And indeed it was not only
Pigasov who was conscious of an oppression.

'I don't like that prig,' Pigasov used to say, 'he expresses himself so
affectedly like a hero of a romance. If he says "I," he stops in rapt
admiration, "I, yes, I!" and the phrases he uses are all so drawn-out;
if you sneeze, he will begin at once to explain to you exactly why you
sneezed and did not cough. If he praises you, it's just as if he were
creating you a prince. If he begins to abuse himself, he humbles himself
into the dust--come, one thinks, he will never dare to face the light
of day after that. Not a bit of it! It only cheers him up, as if he'd
treated himself to a glass of grog.'

Pandalevsky was a little afraid of Rudin, and cautiously tried to win
his favour. Volintsev had got on to curious terms with him. Rudin called
him a knight-errant, and sang his praises to