me too about my tastes, what I read and what I intended to do, and gave me advice. The man of mirth and jest who used to tease me and make me toys had disappeared; here was a serious, simple, and affectionate friend, for whom I could not help feeling respect and sympathy. It was easy and pleasant to talk to him; and yet I felt an involuntary strain also. I was anxious about each word I spoke: I wished so much to earn for my own sake the love which had been given me already merely because I was my father’s daughter.
After putting Sónya to bed, Kátya joined us and began to complain to him of my apathy, about which I had said nothing.
“So she never told me the most important thing of all!” he said, smiling and shaking his head reproachfully at me.
“Why tell you?” I said. “It is very tiresome to talk about, and it will pass off.” (I really felt now, not only that my dejection would pass off, but that it had already passed off, or rather had never existed.)
“It is a bad thing,” he said, “not to be able to stand solitude. Can it be that you are a young lady?”
“Of course, I am a young lady,” I answered laughing.
“Well, I can’t praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste—one who is all for show and has no resources in herself.”
“You have a flattering opinion of me!” I said, just for the sake of saying something.
He was silent for a little. Then he said: “Yes; your likeness to your father means something. There is something in you … ,” and his kind attentive look again flattered me and made me feel a pleasant embarrassment.