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RUDIN now you have had time to make up your mind whether there is any change in him, and I want to know why you don’t like him.’

‘Very well,’ answered Lezhnyov with his habitual phlegm, ‘since your patience is exhausted; only look here, don’t get angry.’

‘Come, begin, begin.’

‘And let me have my say to the end.’

‘Of course, of course; begin.’

‘Very well,’ said Lezhnyov, dropping lazily on to the sofa; ‘I admit that I certainly don’t like Rudin. He is a clever fellow.’

‘I should think so.’

‘He is a remarkably clever man, though in reality essentially shallow.’

‘It’s easy to say that.’

‘Though essentially shallow,’ repeated Lezhnyov; ‘but there’s no great harm in that; we are all shallow. I will not even quarrel with him for being a tyrant at heart, lazy, ill-informed!’

Alexandra Pavlovna clasped her hands.

‘Rudin—ill-informed!’ she cried.

‘Ill-informed!’ repeated Lezhnyov in precisely the same voice, ‘that he likes to live at other people’s expanse, to cut a good figure, and so 109