Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume V).djvu/187

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SMOKE

ought to know what sort of atmosphere I am breathing. Come; I shall be glad to see you, and you will not be bored. (Irina had spelt the Russian incorrectly here.) Prove to me that our explanation to-day has made any sort of misunderstanding between us impossible for ever.—Yours devotedly,

I.'

Litvinov put on a frock coat and a white tie, and set off to Irina's. 'All this is of no importance,' he repeated mentally on the way, 'as for looking at them . . . why shouldn't I have a look at them? It will be curious.' A few days before, these very people had aroused a different sensation in him; they had aroused his indignation.

He walked with quickened steps, his cap pulled down over his eyes, and a constrained smile on his lips, while Bambaev, sitting before Weber's cafe, and pointing him out from a distance to Voroshilov and Pishtchalkin, cried solemnly: 'Do you see that man? He 's a stone! he 's a rock! he 's a flint!!!'

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