'Oh, do leave off, Pavel Yakovlitch,' replied the young girl with some
annoyance. 'Why will you never talk to me seriously? I shall be
angry,' she added with a little coquettish grimace, and she pouted.

'You will not be angry with me, ideal Zoya Nikitishna; you would not
drive me to the dark depths of hopeless despair. And I can't talk to
you seriously, because I'm not a serious person.'

The young girl shrugged her shoulders, and turned to Bersenyev.

'There, he's always like that; he treats me like a child; and I am
eighteen. I am grown-up now.'

'O Lord!' groaned Shubin, rolling his eyes upwards; and Bersenyev
smiled quietly.

The girl stamped with her little foot.

'Pavel Yakovlitch, I shall be angry! _Helene_ was coming with me,' she
went on, 'but she stopped in the garden. The heat frightened her, but
I am not afraid of the heat. Come along.'

She moved forward along the path, slightly swaying her slender figure
at each step, and with a pretty black-mittened little hand pushing her
long soft curls back from her face.

The friends walked after her (Shubin first pressed his hands, without
speaking, to his heart, and then flung them higher than his head), and
in a few instants they came out in front of one of the numerous
country villas with which Kuntsovo is surrounded. A small wooden house