In bad company

VI

On a mild autumn evening both families had gathered on the grassy stretch before the house, talking of one thing and another, and looking up often into the deep blue of the sky, with its glittering sprinkling of stars. The blind boy sat by his mother, as always, with Evelina close by his side.
For a moment, the talk died away. The evening was very quiet. Only the leaves, now and again, would flutter suddenly, and whisper something, and fall still.
And in this moment of silence a brilliant star dropped from somewhere in the dark-blue heights and swept in a flashing curve across the sky, leaving behind it a phosphorescent trace that lingered, only gradually fading, long after the star had disappeared. The little company watched it silently. Anna Mikhailovna, whose hand lay on Petro's arm, felt him suddenly start, and shiver.
"What ... was that?" he asked, turning to her excitedly.
"A star falling, son."
"A star? Of course. I knew it must be a star."
"How could you know that, Petro?"
A sad note of doubt sounded in the mother's voice.
"Ah, but it's true, what he says," put in Evelina. "He knows lots of things ... well, somehow."
"This sensitivity to the outer world, increasing with every passing day, indicated a rapid approach to the critical age that lies between adolescence and youth. As yet, however, Petro's development was quiet enough. It might have seemed, even, that he had resigned himself to his fate; and the strangely even melancholy, never lifting, yet never greatly deepening, that had become habitual to him, now seemed somewhat less. But this was only a temporary lull: one of those breathing spaces that Nature gives us, as though of deliberate purpose—that the young life may muster up its strength, and gird itself to meet new storm and stress. During such lulls new problems accumulate, unnoticed, and gradually mature. One touch—and the soul's tranquillity is thrown into confusion, to its very depths, like the sea before the onslaught of a sudden storm.