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Updated: June 20, 2025
Mariana pulled it away quickly; not that Nejdanov's action seemed unsuitable to her, but that he should on no account think that she was asking for sympathy. Through the branches of the pines a glimpse of a woman's dress could be seen. Mariana drew herself up. "Look, your Madonna has sent her spy. That maid has to keep a watch on me and inform her mistress where I am and with whom.
With Nejdanov he behaved in a very peculiar manner. He was attracted to the young student and felt an almost tender sympathy for him. At one part of the discussion, where Nejdanov broke out into a perfect torrent of words, Solomin got up quietly, moved across the room with long strides, and shut a window that was standing open just above Nejdanov's head.
The latter was not a master in the art of writing, and responded only in short clumsy sentences, but Nejdanov had no need of lengthy replies; he knew quite well that his friend swallowed every word of his, as the dust in the road swallows each drop of rain, that he would keep his secrets sacredly, and that in his hopeless solitude he had no other interests but his, Nejdanov's, interests.
"Just a minute, please," Sipiagin interrupted him, "I think I've seen you before. I never forget faces. But er... er... really... where have I seen you?" "You are not mistaken, your excellency. I had the honour of meeting you in St. Petersburg at a certain person's who... who has since... unfortunately... incurred your displeasure " Sipiagin jumped up from his chair. "Why, at Mr. Nejdanov's?
"A portrait?" she drawled out. "Is it a woman's?" She handed him the packet, which he took so clumsily that it slipped out of his hand and fell open. "Why... it's my portrait!" Mariana exclaimed quickly. "I suppose I may look at my own portrait." She took it out of Nejdanov's hand. "Did you do it?" "No... I didn't." "Who then? Markelov?" "Yes, you've guessed right."
Mariana had not yet appeared, when Solomin came into Nejdanov's room. The latter was standing with his face to the window, his forehead resting on the palm of his hand and his elbow on the window-pane. Solomin touched him on the shoulder. He turned around quickly; dishevelled and unwashed, Nejdanov had a strange wild look. Solomin, too, had changed during the last days.
It seemed to him that he had no right to take this gift; that if Markelov knew what was in his, Nejdanov's, heart, he would not have given it him. He stood holding the round piece of cardboard, carefully set in a black frame with a mount of gold paper, not knowing what to do with it. "Why, this is a man's whole life I'm holding in my hand," he thought.
Although she had said nothing to her "flighty" niece during Nejdanov's absence, still she had let her plainly understand that everything was known to her, and that if she had not been so painfully sorry for her, and did not despise her from the bottom of her heart, she would have been most frightfully angry at the whole thing. An expression of restrained inward contempt played over her face.
She showed a genuine interest in her brother, although she had not once mentioned him in Nejdanov's presence. One could gather from what she said that the impression Mariana had made on her brother had not escaped her notice.
During dinner she had exchanged glances with Nejdanov several times on his account, and in the end found herself involuntarily comparing the two, not to Nejdanov's advantage. Nejdanov's face was, it is true, handsomer and pleasanter to look at than Solomin's, but the very face expressed a medley of troubled sensations: embarrassment, annoyance, impatience, and even dejection.
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