Next morning Anna opens the breakfast-room door and finds Bazarov already long over his cup. He glances up sharply. She turns towards him as if he had signed to her. Her face is pale. She goes back to her boudoir and does not come out until luncheon. Rain keeps them indoors. Arkady reads a journal aloud. The Princess stares as if the reading were indecent. He takes no notice, raises his voice, and bends towards Katia.
Anna asks Bazarov to the boudoir. She thinks he mentioned a textbook. The Princess looks round as if this does surprise her. In the room Anna asks the title, then holds up her hand. She did not bring him here for Pelouse and Frémy, or for Ganot. She brought him to take up last night at the point where he left so abruptly. Happiness, she says. She was speaking of herself. Why does music, or a summer evening, feel like felicity somewhere else? Where we are not, there do we wish to be, he answers. She wants to know who he is, and what goal he is travelling towards. A district physician, he says. She waves that away. That answer is for Arkady. Medicine, by his own account, does not exist. A gulf is fixed between them. You I do not despise, he says, and you know it. She knows nothing of the kind, and wants what is taking place in him now. One would think he was a state, he says. Could she tell such a thing of herself? She hesitates, then says she could. He bows, ironic. Then she has the advantage of him.
She ventures that they have not met in vain, and that his reserve will go. He walks to the window. Does she want the cause of that reserve? She does, and a fear she cannot account for comes over her. Learn, then, that he loves her with a blind, insensate passion. She has forced it from him at last. He presses his forehead to the pane. This is not a boy's diffidence. It is a strong and terrible emotion, akin to madness. Horror comes over her, and a great compassion. She cries his name, and tenderness is in it whether she meant it or not. He seizes her hands and presses her to his chest. She does not free herself at once. Then she draws into a corner. You have mistaken me. Another step and she would have screamed. He bites his lips and leaves.
Half an hour later a maid brings a note of one line. Must he depart today, or may he remain until tomorrow? She answers: why depart? She has failed to understand him, and he has failed to understand her. That is all. Mentally she adds that she has failed to understand herself. Until dinner she paces with her hands behind her, and now and then wipes a burning spot on her neck. She decides she is to blame, and that she could not have foreseen the end. In the mirror she catches her own head thrown back, a mysterious smile between the lips, and cries no, no, again no. Freedom from worry is the chief thing in the world. She had let a vague yearning push her to a boundary, and she peeped over it. In front of her was not an abyss. It was a waste, a sheer ugliness.
