garden; the dark leaves lay thick in the walks. It was already
beginning to get dark early.

"I haven't seen you for a whole week," Startsev went on, "and if
you only knew what suffering it is! Let us sit down. Listen to me."

They had a favourite place in the garden; a seat under an old
spreading maple. And now they sat down on this seat.

"What do you want?" said Ekaterina Ivanovna drily, in a matter-of-fact
tone.

"I have not seen you for a whole week; I have not heard you for so
long. I long passionately, I thirst for your voice. Speak."

She fascinated him by her freshness, the naïve expression of her
eyes and cheeks. Even in the way her dress hung on her, he saw
something extraordinarily charming, touching in its simplicity and
naïve grace; and at the same time, in spite of this naïveté, she
seemed to him intelligent and developed beyond her years. He could
talk with her about literature, about art, about anything he liked;
could complain to her of life, of people, though it sometimes
happened in the middle of serious conversation she would laugh
inappropriately or run away into the house. Like almost all girls
of her neighbourhood, she had read a great deal (as a rule, people
read very little in S----, and at the lending library they said if
it were not for the girls and the young Jews, they might as well
shut up the library). This afforded Startsev infinite delight; he
used to ask her eagerly every time what she had been reading the
last few days, and listened enthralled while she told him.