Nadya tried to say something, but could not.  Then Sasha helped Nadya in and covered her feet with a rug.  Then he sat down beside her.

“Good luck to you!  God bless you!” Granny cried from the steps.  “Mind you write to us from Moscow, Sasha!”

“Right.  Good-bye, Granny.”

“The Queen of Heaven keep you!”

“Oh, what weather!” said Sasha.

It was only now that Nadya began to cry.  Now it was clear to her that she certainly was going, which she had not really believed when she was saying good-bye to Granny, and when she was looking at her mother.  Good-bye, town!  And she suddenly thought of it all:  Andrey, and his father and the new house and the naked lady with the vase; and it all no longer frightened her, nor weighed upon her, but was naive and trivial and continually retreated further away.  And when they got into the railway carriage and the train began to move, all that past which had been so big and serious shrank up into something tiny, and a vast wide future which till then had scarcely been noticed began unfolding before her.  The rain pattered on the carriage windows, nothing could be seen but the green fields, telegraph posts with birds sitting on the wires flitted by, and joy made her hold her breath; she thought that she was going to freedom, going to study, and this was just like what used, ages ago, to be called going off to be a free Cossack.

She laughed and cried and prayed all at once.

“It’s a-all right,” said Sasha, smiling.  “It’s a-all right.”

VI

Autumn had passed and winter, too, had gone.  Nadya had begun to be very homesick and thought every day of her mother and her grandmother; she thought of Sasha too.  The letters that came from home were kind and gentle, and it seemed as though everything by now were forgiven and forgotten.  In May after the examinations she set off for home in good health and high spirits, and stopped on the way at Moscow to see Sasha.  He was just the same as the year before, with the same beard and unkempt hair, with the same large beautiful eyes, and he still wore the same coat and canvas trousers; but he looked unwell and worried, he seemed both older and thinner, and kept coughing, and for some reason he struck Nadya as grey and provincial.

“My God, Nadya has come!” he said, and laughed gaily.  “My darling girl!”

They sat in the printing room, which was full of tobacco smoke, and smelt strongly, stiflingly of Indian ink and paint; then they went to his room, which also smelt of tobacco and was full of the traces of spitting; near a cold samovar stood a broken plate with dark paper on it, and there were masses of dead flies on the table and on the floor.  And everything showed that Sasha ordered his personal life in a slovenly way and lived anyhow, with utter contempt for comfort, and if anyone began talking to him of his personal happiness, of his personal life, of affection for him, he would not have understood and would have only laughed.