some time past he's seemed out of spirits. Can he be in love?─Heaven forfend!'
Mashurina scowled.
'He's gone to the library for some books; he's no time to be in love and no one to be in love with.'
'How about you?' almost broke from Paklin's lips. 'I want to see him,' he uttered aloud, because I have to talk to him about an important affair.'
'What sort of affair?' put in Ostrodumov. 'Our affairs?'
'Perhaps yours . . . that is, our common affairs.'
Ostrodumov hummed. In his heart he was doubtful, but then he reflected, 'Who can tell? He's such a slippery eel!'
'Here he comes at last,' said Mashurina suddenly, and in her small unlovely eyes, that were fastened on the door of the anteroom, there was a flash of something warm and tender, a kind of deep inward spot of light. . . .
The door opened, and this time there entered a young man of three-and-twenty, a cap on his head and a bundle of books under his arm—Nezhdanov himself.
13
