At the Governor's ball Matvei Ilyitch is the guest of honour. He smiles on every man, bows to the ladies like a French chevalier, and laughs the large laugh a bigwig owes the room. He claps Arkady on the back and calls him young nephew. Bazarov, coaxed with difficulty into an ancient tail-coat, gets a glance that skims his cheek and a murmur in which only "I," "Yes," and "extremely" can be heard. Sitnikov receives a finger and a smile, the head already turning away. Madame Kukshin, without a crinoline, in dirty gloves, a bird of paradise in her hair, is told "Enchanté." The civilians crowd the walls. An officer fresh from six weeks in Paris spends the evening on a French that would amuse France, if France did not think it safer to say that Russians speak the language like angels.
Arkady dances badly. Bazarov does not dance. They take a corner until Sitnikov's contemptuous face changes. Madame Odintsov is entering. A tall woman in a black gown stands in the doorway, bare arms beside an upright figure, fuchsia trailing from her hair to her shoulders, brilliant eyes under a white forehead. Quiet, not dreamy. Bazarov says no other woman in the room has a face like it. After the quadrille Sitnikov presents Arkady. She looks astonished, at his excessive intimacy or at his stumbling, until she hears the name Kirsanov. She has twice met Nikolai Petrovitch and will be glad to know the son. She grants an aide-de-camp the next dance. Arkady, very deferential, asks if that means she looks too old, and then asks for the mazurka. She is twenty-nine, and she looks at him as a married sister might look at a very young brother. He feels the veriest schoolboy. Her nose is a little thick, her colour not flawless, and still he has never met a woman so charming in her person. Even the folds of her dress hang straighter than other women's.
When the mazurka begins he can find no word. Her calm infects him. Within a quarter of an hour he is talking of his father, his uncle, Petersburg, and the country, while she opens and closes her fan. She says little, and each word shows she has thought and felt a good deal. She asks who was with him before Sitnikov brought him over, and turns to look when Arkady praises Bazarov's face. The music stops with a jerk. Merci, she says. He must call, and bring his friend. She wants to see a man who has the temerity to believe in nothing. The Governor leads her to supper. She smiles back once. Arkady thinks she will already have forgotten him. In the corner Bazarov has heard some man call her something, and supposes the man a fool. The allusion escapes Arkady. Young innocence, Bazarov says. She is nice, Arkady manages, but cold and formal. As a stagnant pool, Bazarov finishes. Perhaps you like ice. She has asked them both to call. Whatever she is, provincial lioness or an emancipée like Kukshin, she has a pair of shoulders he has not seen in many a day. Arkady recoils, and reproaches him for something else entirely. Why does he refuse women freedom of thought? Because, Bazarov says, no woman who is not a freak thinks with freedom. Supper ends the talk. Madame Kukshin follows them out with a nervous, wrathful, slightly frightened smile. Neither young man has noticed her. She stays until four in the morning, and closes the Governor's fête by dancing a polka-mazurka with Sitnikov.
