XIII


During the first fortnight of Insarov's stay in the Kuntsovo
neighbourhood, he did not visit the Stahovs more than four or five
times; Bersenyev went to see them every day. Elena was always pleased
to see him, lively and interesting talk always sprang up between them,
and yet he often went home with a gloomy face. Shubin scarcely showed
himself; he was working with feverish energy at his art; he either
stayed locked up in his room, from which he would emerge in a blouse,
smeared all over with clay, or else he spent days in Moscow where he
had a studio, to which models and Italian sculptors, his friends and
teachers, used to come to see him. Elena did not once succeed in
talking with Insarov, as she would have liked to do; in his absence
she prepared questions to ask him about many things, but when he came
she felt ashamed of her plans. Insarov's very tranquillity embarrassed
her; it seemed to her that she had not the right to force him to speak
out; and she resolved to wait; for all that, she felt that at every
visit however trivial might be the words that passed between them, he
attracted her more and more; but she never happened to be left alone
with him--and to grow intimate with any one, one must have at least
one conversation alone with him. She talked a great deal about him to
Bersenyev. Bersenyev realised that Elena's imagination had been struck
by Insarov, and was glad that his friend had not 'missed fire' as
Shubin had asserted. He told her cordially all he knew of him down to
the minutest details (we often, when we want to please some one, bring