g, my dears,' began Konstantin Diomiditch, 'how early you
have come for your walk to-day! But I,' he added, turning to Bassistoff,
'have been out a long while already; it's my passion--to enjoy nature.'

'We saw how you were enjoying nature,' muttered Bassistoff.

'You are a materialist, God knows what you are imagining! I know
you.' When Pandalevsky spoke to Bassistoff or people like him, he grew
slightly irritated, and pronounced the letter _s_ quite clearly, even
with a slight hiss.

'Why, were you asking your way of that girl, am I to suppose?' said
Bassistoff, shifting his eyes to right and to left.

He felt that Pandalevsky was looking him straight in the face, and this
fact was exceedingly unpleasant to him. 'I repeat, a materialist and
nothing more.'

'You certainly prefer to see only the prosaic side in everything.'

'Boys!' cried Bassistoff suddenly, 'do you see that willow at the
corner? let's see who can get to it first. One! two! three! and away!'

The boys set off at full speed to the willow. Bassistoff rushed after
them.

'What a lout!' thought Pandalevsky, 'he is spoiling those boys. A
perfect peasant!'

And looking with satisfaction at his own neat and elegant figure,
Konstantin Diomiditch struck his coat-sleeve twice with his open hand,
pulled up his collar, and went on his way. When he had reached his own
room, he put on an old dressing-gown and sat down with an anxious face
to the piano.

II

Darya Mihailovna's house was regarded as almost the first in the whole
province. It was a huge stone mansion, built after designs of Rastrelli
in the taste of last century, and in a commanding position on the summit
of a hill, at whose base flowed one of the principal rivers of central
Russia. Darya Mihailovna herself was a wealthy and distinguished lady,
the widow of a privy councillor. Pandalevsky said of her, that she
knew all Europe and all Europe knew her! However, Europe knew her very
little; even at Petersburg she had not played a very prominent part;
but on the other hand at Moscow every one knew her and visited her. She
belonged to the highest society, and was spoken of as a rather eccentric
woman, not wholly good-natured, but excessively clever. In her youth
she had been very pretty. Poets had written verses to her, young men
had been in love with her, distinguished men had paid her homage. But
twenty-five or thirty years had passed since those days and not a trace
of her former c