Victor held out his hand lazily, took the flowers, smelt them carelessly, and began to turn them around in his fingers, looking up with thoughtful importance. Akulina gazed at him. There was so much tender devotion, reverent obedience, and love in her pensive eyes. She at once feared him, and yet she dared not cry, and inwardly she bade him farewell, and admired him for the last time; and he lay there, stretched out like a sultan, and endured her admiration with magnanimous patience and condescension. I confess I was filled with indignation as I looked at his red face, which betrayed satisfied selfishness through his feigned contempt and indifference. Akulina was so beautiful at this moment. All her soul opened before him trustingly and passionately;--it reached out to him, caressed him, and he--He dropped the cornflowers on the grass, took out from the side-pocket of his coat a round glass in a bronze frame and began to force it into his eye; but no matter how hard he tried to hold it with his knitted brow, his raised cheek, and even with his nose, the glass dropped out and fell into his hands. “What’s this?” asked Akulina at last, with surprise. “A lorgnette,” he replied importantly. “What is it for?” “To see better.” “Let me see it.” Victor frowned, but gave her the glass. “Look out; don’t break it.” “Don’t be afraid, I’ll not break it.” She lifted it timidly to her eye. “I can’t see anything,” she said naively. “Shut your eye,” he retorted in the tone of a dissatisfied teacher. She closed the eye before which she held the glass. “Not that eye, not that one, you fool! The other one!” exclaimed Victor, and, not allowing her to correct her mistake, he took the lorgnette away from her. Akulina blushed, laughed slightly, and turned away. “It seems it’s not for us.” “Of course not!” The poor girl maintained silence, and heaved a deep sigh. “Oh, Victor Alexandrich, how will I get along without you?” she said suddenly. Victor wiped the lorgnette and put it back into his pocket. “Yes, yes,” he said at last. “At first it will really be hard for you.” He tapped her on the shoulder condescendingly; she quietly took his hand from her shoulder and kissed it. “Well, yes, yes, you are indeed a good girl,” he went on, with a self-satisfied smile; “but it can’t be helped! Consider it yourself! My master and I can’t stay here, can we? Winter is near, and to pass the winter in the country is simply nasty--you know it yourself. It’s a different thing in St. Petersburg! There are such wonders over there that you could not imagine even in your dreams, you silly--What houses, what streets, and society, education--it’s something wonderful!--” Akulina listened to him with close attention, slightly opening her lips like a child. “However,” he added, wriggling on the ground, “why do I say all this to you? You can’t understand it anyway!” “Why not, Victor Alexandrich? I understood, I understood everything.” “Just think of her!”