These were the persons who had been
called socialists. And now she could not understand why it was
that her son and his friends were socialists.
When they had all departed, she asked Pavel:
"Pavlusha, are you a socialist?"
"Yes," he said, standing before her, straight and stalwart as
always. "Why?"
The mother heaved a heavy sigh, and lowering her eyes, said:
"So, Pavlusha? Why, they are against the Czar; they killed one."
Pavel walked up and down the room, ran his hand across his face,
and, smiling, said:
"We don't need to do that!"
He spoke to her for a long while in a low, serious voice. She
looked into his face and thought:
"He will do nothing bad; he is incapable of doing bad!"
And thereafter the terrible word was repeated with increasing
frequency; its sharpness wore off, and it became as familiar to
her ear as scores of other words unintelligible to her. But Sashenka
did not please her, and when she came the mother felt troubled and
ill at ease.
Once she said to the Little Russian, with an expression of
dissatisfaction about the mouth:
"What a stern person this Sashenka is! Flings her commands around!
--You must do this and you must do that!"
The Little Russian laughed aloud.
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