She was out of sight, drying her hands, lighting up the corner of the room where the towels hung. … If Mr. Shatov were on her hands, she would not be regretting that the afternoon could hold no solitary wanderings. She made no calculations; for she could not be robbed. That was strength. She was gone. Miriam finished her operations as though she remained, drying her hands unhurriedly, standing where she had stood, trying to survey the unforetellable afternoon with something of her sustained tranquillity.
He would probably be plunging up and down the corridor with a growing impatience. … There he was, unconcernedly waiting; his singing determined child’s head reared hatless above the dreadful overcoat, the clear light of the corridor upon its modest thought-moulded dignity … distinguished … that was what he was. She felt unworthy, helplessly inadequate, coming up the corridor to claim him. She was amongst the people passing about him before he saw her; and she caught again the look of profound reproachful brooding melancholy seated in his eyes, so strangely contradicting his whole happy look of a child standing at a party, gazing, everything pouring into its wide eyes; dancing and singing within itself, unconscious of its motionless body.
“Here we are,” she said avertedly as he came eagerly forward.
“Let us quickly to this official,” he urged in his indoor voice.
“All right; this way.” He hurried along at her side, beard forward, his yellow boots plunging in long rapid strides beneath his voluminously floating overcoat.
She resented the librarian’s official manner; the appearance of the visitor, the little card he promptly produced, should have been enough. Stud. Schtudent, how much more expressive than stewdent … to be able to go about the world for years, so-and-so, stud … all doors open and committed to nothing. She asserted herself by making suggestions in French. Mr. Shatov responded politely, also in French, and she felt the absurdity of her eager interference, holding him a prisoner, hiding his studious command of English, in order to flourish forth her knowledge. “We are not afraid even of Russian, if Mr. Shatov prefers to use his own tongue,” said the librarian. Miriam flashed a suspicious glance. He was smiling a self-conscious superior English smile. It soured into embarrassment under her eye.
“It is no matter,” said Mr. Shatov gently, “you shall immediately say me the requisite formules which I shall at once write.” He stood beautiful, the gentle unconsciously reproachful prey of English people unable to resist their desire to be effective. They stood conquered, competing in silent appreciation, as he bent writing his way into their forgotten library.
“Now I am pairfectly happy,” he said as he passed through the swing doors of the reading-room. His head was up radiantly singing, he was rushing trustfully forward, looking at nothing, carrying her on, close at his side, till they reached the barrier of the outmost catalogue desk. He pulled up facing her, with wide wild eyes looking at nothing. “We shall at once take Anakarayninna in English” he shouted in an enthusiastic whisper.
“We must choose seats before we get books,” murmured Miriam. There was plenty to do and explain; the revelation of her meagre attack on the riches of the library need not yet come. Were they to read together? Had he reached his goal “midst all those literatures” to spend his time in showing her Tolstoy? He followed her absently about as she filled in the time while they waited for their book, by showing all she knew of the routine of the library. “There shall of course,” he said in a gruff explanatory tone, arresting her near the entrance to the central enclosure, “be a quite exhaustive system of catalogue, but I find there is too much formalities; with all these little baskets.” “Ssh,” begged Miriam leading him away. She drifted to the bookshelves, showing him the one shelf she knew on the south side; there was a reader on a ladder at the very shelf. “Carlyle’s French Revolution is up there,” she said confidently. “Na, na,” he growled reproachfully, “this is a most purely unreliable fictional history, a tour de force from special individual prejudices. You should take rather Thiers.” She piloted him across to her shelf on the north side to point out the Revue des deux Mondes and the North American Review. He paused, searching along the shelves. “Ah. Here is books.” He drew out and flung open a heavy beautifully printed volume with wide margins on the pages; she would show him the clever little folding arrangements to hold heavy volumes; “You do not know these?” he demanded of her silence; “ah that is a great pity; it is the complete discours de l’Académie française; you shall immediately read them; ah, they are the most perfect modèles.” She glanced at the open page beginning “Messieurs! Le sentiment de fierté avec laquelle je vous”; it was a voice; exactly like the voice of Mr. Shatov. He stood with the heavy open volume, insisting in his dreadfully audible whisper on wonderful French names prefixed to the titles of addresses, fascinating subjects, one of them Mr. Gladstone! He looked French as he spoke; a brilliantly polished Frenchman. Why had he not gone to France? He was German too, with a German education and yet with some impatiently unexplained understanding and contempt—for Germany. Why was he drawn towards England? That was the mysterious thing. What was the secret of the reverence in this man towards England and the English? He was not an anarchist. There he stood, Russian, come from all that faraway beauty, with German and French culture in his mind, longingly to England, coming to Tansley Street; unconsciously bringing her her share in his longed-for arrival and its fulfilments. She watched as he talked, marvelling at the undeserved wealth
