At Nikolskoe Katya and Arkady were sitting in the garden on a turf seat
in the shade of a tall ash tree; Fifi had placed himself on the ground
near them, giving his slender body that graceful curve, which is known
among dog-fanciers as 'the hare bend.' Both Arkady and Katya were
silent; he was holding a half-open book in his hands, while she was
picking out of a basket the few crumbs of bread left in it, and
throwing them to a small family of sparrows, who with the frightened
impudence peculiar to them were hopping and chirping at her very feet.
A faint breeze stirring in the ash leaves kept slowly moving pale-gold
flecks of sunlight up and down over the path and Fifi's tawny back; a
patch of unbroken shade fell upon Arkady and Katya; only from time to
time a bright streak gleamed on her hair. Both were silent, but the
very way in which they were silent, in which they were sitting
together, was expressive of confidential intimacy; each of them seemed
not even to be thinking of his companion, while secretly rejoicing in
his presence. Their faces, too, had changed since we saw them last;
Arkady looked more tranquil, Katya brighter and more daring.

'Don't you think,' began Arkady, 'that the ash has been very well named
in Russian _yasen_; no other tree is so lightly and brightly
transparent (_yasno_) against the air as it is.'

Katya raised her eyes to look upward, and assented, 'Yes'; while Arkady
thought, 'Well, she does not reproach me for _talking finely_.'

'I don't like Heine,' said Katya, glancing towards the book which
Arkady was holding in his hands, 'either when he laughs or when he
weeps; I like him when he's thoughtful and melancholy.'

'And I like him when he laughs,' remarked Arkady.

'That's the relics left in you of your old satirical tendencies.'
('Relics!' thought Arkady--'if Bazarov had heard that?') 'Wait a
little; we shall transform you.'

'Who will transform me? You?'

'Who?--my sister; Porfiry Platonovitch, whom you've given up
quarrelling with; auntie, whom you escorted to church the day before
yesterday.'

'Well, I couldn't refuse! And as for Anna Sergyevna, she agreed with
Yevgeny in a great many things, you remember?'

'My sister was under his influence then, just as you were.'

'As I was? Do you discover, may I ask, that I've shaken off his
influence now?'

Katya did not speak.

'I know,' pursued Arkady, 'you never liked him.'

'I can have no opinion about him.'

'Do you kno