in spite of his disdainful neglect of my presence. But I was invariably
prevented from doing so by my shyness.
XXVI. DISCUSSIONS
Woloda was lying reading a French novel on the sofa when I paid my usual
visit to his room after my evening lessons. He looked up at me for a
moment from his book, and then went on reading. This perfectly simple
and natural movement, however, offended me. I conceived that the glance
implied a question why I had come and a wish to hide his thoughts from
me (I may say that at that period a tendency to attach a meaning to the
most insignificant of acts formed a prominent feature in my character).
So I went to the table and also took up a book to read. Yet, even before
I had actually begun reading, the idea struck me how ridiculous it was
that, although we had never seen one another all day, we should have not
a word to exchange.
'Are you going to stay in to-night, Woloda?'
'I don't know. Why?'
'Oh, because--' Seeing that the conversation did not promise to be
a success, I took up my book again, and began to read. Yet it was a
strange thing that, though we sometimes passed whole hours together
without speaking when we were alone, the mere presence of a
third--sometimes of a taciturn and wholly uninteresting person--sufficed
to plunge us into the most varied and engrossing of discussions. The
truth was that we knew one another too well, and to know a person either
too well or too little acts as a bar to intimacy.
'Is Woloda at home?' came in Dubkoff's voice from the ante-room.
'Yes!' shouted Woloda, springing up and throwing aside his book.
Dubkoff and Nechludoff entered.
'Are you coming to the theatre, Woloda?'
'No, I have no time,' he replied with a blush.
'Oh, never mind that. Come along.'
'But I haven't got a ticket.'
'Tickets, as many as you like, at the entrance.'
'Very well, then; I'll be back in a minute,' said Woloda evasively as
he left the room. I knew very well that he wanted to go, but that he
had declined because he had no money, and had now gone to borrow five
roubles of one of the servants--to be repaid when he got his next
allowance.
'How do you do, DIPLOMAT?' said Dubkoff to me as he shook me by the
hand. Woloda's friends had called me by that nickname since the day when
Grandmamma had said at luncheon that Woloda must go into the army, but
that she would like to see me in the diplomatic service, dressed in a
black frock-coat, and with my hair arranged a la coq (the two essential
requirements, in her opinion, of a DIPLOMAT).
'Where has Woloda gone to?' asked Nechludoff.
'I don't know,' I replied, blushing to think that nevertheless they had
probably guessed his errand.
'I suppose he has no money? Yes, I can see I am right, O diplomatist,'
he added, taking my smile as an answer in the affirmative. 'Well, I have
none, either. Have you any, Dubkoff?'
'I'll see,' replied Dubkoff, feeling for his pocket, and rummaging
gingerly about with his squat little fingers among his small change.
'Yes, here are five copecks-twenty, but that's all,' he concluded with a
comic gesture of his hand.
At this point Woloda re-entered.
'Are we going?'
'No.'
'What an odd fellow you are!' said Nechludoff. 'Why don't you say that
you have no money? Here, take my ticket.'
'But what are you going to do?'
'He can go into his cousin's box,' said Dubkoff.
'No, I'm not going at all,' replied Nechludoff.
'Why?'
'Because I hate sitting in a box.'
'And for what reason?'
'I don't know. Somehow I feel uncomfortable there.'
'Always the same! I can't understand a fellow feeling uncomfortable
when he is sitting with people who are fond of him. It is unnatural, mon
cher.'
'But what else is there to be done si je suis tant timide? You never
blushed in your life, but I do at the least trifle,' and he blushed at
that moment.
'Do you know what that nervousness of yours proceeds from?' said Dubkoff
