"With me! That is impossible," bursts out Lensky--"impossible! What can a widower do with a grown daughter?"
Nikolai frowned. For a moment he is silent, then he says: "Do you remember how strongly you expressed yourself about Kasin, when he sent his daughter out into the wide world merely because she interfered with his bachelor life?"
Lensky's face darkens. This time Nikolai's remark has hit its aim. "And you will draw a comparison between me and Kasin?" says he, slowly, cuttingly.
Nikolai thinks he has gone too far. "Naturally I did not think of that," he begins; "the actions of a great artist, of a genius----"
"Spare me this genius; I am sick of being eternally pursued with this word," he cries. "I will be judged as a man with Kasin. As a man, what have I in common with this frivolous egoist, who first ran through his own and his wife's property, and then lived on still poorer devils, while he went about the world without troubling himself that his wife, his child, meanwhile suffered from hunger, without asking if they were well or ill; while I"--he drew a deep breath--"while I have tormented myself, worried myself about you my whole life long? All that you possess I won with my head and hands. God knows, I desired little for myself, but for you nothing was good enough. And if one of you wanted anything, I left everything and came from the ends of the earth to look after you--" He stops, out of breath.
"And you stayed with us as long as you were worried about us," says Nikolai, softly. "Yes, father, you were boundlessly generous to us, and still miserly. You never denied us anything, and still everything--yourself!"
"H-m! and did you miss me?" asks Lensky, harshly, quite repellantly, and looks at his son sideways, mistrustfully.
Lensky had not expected that; the short, simple words went deep to his heart. He changed color, rose, walked up and down a number of times, and at length remained standing before Nikolai, and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"I know that I was in the wrong," says he, in a changed, indescribably gentle voice. "I do not deserve any children such as you are. If you had both turned out quite badly, I still could not have wondered. But you have but another's blood in your veins, and--and--" [....than you] and lays his hand over his eyes, then he [...e her, a ...] foot. "I have neglected you, that is true [... ..u] must not imagine--" Again he pauses, [...] after awhile he continues: "As regards Mascha, God knows I should like to have my little lark about me, but with me it is really somewhat different than with--well, with Kasin. Kasin has his brilliant position and lives in St. Petersburg; but I--to-day I am in Paris, to-morrow in Berlin, the next day in Vienna. How, then, can I take a young girl about with me?"