Kovrin sat with Tanya all the evening, and after midnight went out with her into the garden.  It was cold.  There was a strong smell of burning already in the garden.  In the big orchard, which was called the commercial garden, and which brought Yegor Semyonitch several thousand clear profit, a thick, black, acrid smoke was creeping over the ground and, curling around the trees, was saving those thousands from the frost.  Here the trees were arranged as on a chessboard, in straight and regular rows like ranks of soldiers, and this severe pedantic regularity, and the fact that all the trees were of the same size, and had tops and trunks all exactly alike, made them look monotonous and even dreary.  Kovrin and Tanya walked along the rows where fires of dung, straw, and all sorts of refuse were smouldering, and from time to time they were met by labourers who wandered in the smoke like shadows.  The only trees in flower were the cherries, plums, and certain sorts of apples, but the whole garden was plunged in smoke, and it was only near the nurseries that Kovrin could breathe freely.

“Even as a child I used to sneeze from the smoke here,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “but to this day I don’t understand how smoke can keep off frost.”

“Smoke takes the place of clouds when there are none . . .” answered Tanya.

“And what do you want clouds for?”

“In overcast and cloudy weather there is no frost.”

“You don’t say so.”

He laughed and took her arm.  Her broad, very earnest face, chilled with the frost, with her delicate black eyebrows, the turned-up collar of her coat, which prevented her moving her head freely, and the whole of her thin, graceful figure, with her skirts tucked up on account of the dew, touched him.

“Good heavens! she is grown up,” he said.  “When I went away from here last, five years ago, you were still a child.  You were such a thin, longlegged creature, with your hair hanging on your shoulders; you used to wear short frocks, and I used to tease you, calling you a heron. . . .  What time does!”

“Yes, five years!” sighed Tanya.  “Much water has flowed since then.  Tell me, Andryusha, honestly,” she began eagerly, looking him in the face:  “do you feel strange with us now?  But why do I ask you?  You are a man, you live your own interesting life, you are somebody . . . .  To grow apart is so natural!  But however that may be, Andryusha, I want you to think of us as your people.  We have a right to that.”

“I do, Tanya.”

“On your word of honour?”

“Yes, on my word of honour.”

“You were surprised this evening that we have so many of your photographs.  You know my father adores you.  Sometimes it seems to me that he loves you more than he does me.  He is proud of you.  You are a clever, extraordinary man, you have made a brilliant career for yourself, and he is persuaded that you have turned out like this because he brought you up.  I don’t try to prevent him from thinking so.  Let him.”