but could not bring himself to it.

"I am very fond of you, and so I am going to speak to you openly,"
he decided at last, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "I deal
plainly with certain delicate questions, and say exactly what I
think, and I cannot endure so-called hidden thoughts. I will speak
plainly: you are the only man to whom I should not be afraid to
marry my daughter. You are a clever man with a good heart, and would
not let my beloved work go to ruin; and the chief reason is that I
love you as a son, and I am proud of you. If Tanya and you could
get up a romance somehow, then--well! I should be very glad and
even happy. I tell you this plainly, without mincing matters, like
an honest man."

Kovrin laughed. Yegor Semyonitch opened the door to go out, and
stood in the doorway.

"If Tanya and you had a son, I would make a horticulturist of him,"
he said, after a moment's thought. "However, this is idle dreaming.
Goodnight."

Left alone, Kovrin settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and
took up the articles. The title of one was "On Intercropping"; of
another, "A few Words on the Remarks of Monsieur Z. concerning the
Trenching of the Soil for a New Garden"; a third, "Additional Matter
concerning Grafting with a Dormant Bud"; and they were all of the
same sort. But what a restless, jerky tone! What nervous, almost
hysterical passion! Here was an article, one would have thought,
with most peaceable and impersonal contents: the subject of it was
the Russian Antonovsky Apple. But Yegor Semyonitch began it with