Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/39

Rh 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.