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"Do you know what that nervousness of yours proceeds from?" said Dubkoff in a protecting sort of tone, "D'un exces d'amour propre, mon cher." "What do you mean by 'exces d'amour propre'?" asked Nechludoff, highly offended. "On the contrary, I am shy just because I have TOO LITTLE amour propre. I always feel as though I were being tiresome and disagreeable, and therefore "
The truth was that we knew one another too well, and to know a person either too well or too little acts as a bar to intimacy. "Is Woloda at home?" came in Dubkoff's voice from the ante-room. "Yes!" shouted Woloda, springing up and throwing aside his book. Dubkoff and Nechludoff entered. "Are you coming to the theatre, Woloda?" "No, I have no time," he replied with a blush. "Oh, never mind that.
Although, when in the society of Woloda's friends, I had to play a part that hurt my pride, I liked sitting in his room when he had visitors, and silently watching all they did. The two who came most frequently to see him were a military adjutant called Dubkoff and a student named Prince Nechludoff.
This way, Nechludoff," said Woloda's familiar voice behind me. I turned and saw my brother and Dimitri their gowns unbuttoned, and their hands waving a greeting to me threading their way through the desks. A moment's glance would have sufficed to show any one that they were second-course students persons to whom the University was as a second home.
Have you any, Dubkoff?" "I'll see," replied Dubkoff, feeling for his pocket, and rummaging gingerly about with his squat little fingers among his small change. "Yes, here are five copecks-twenty, but that's all," he concluded with a comic gesture of his hand. At this point Woloda re-entered. "Are we going?" "No." "What an odd fellow you are!" said Nechludoff.
From that time forth, a strange, but exceedingly pleasant, relation subsisted between Dimitri Nechludoff and myself. Before other people he paid me scanty attention, but as soon as ever we were alone, we would sit down together in some comfortable corner and, forgetful both of time and of everything around us, fall to reasoning.
"I mean to prove to you that my shyness is not the result of conceit." "You can prove it as we go along." "But I have told you that I am NOT going." "Well, then, stay here and prove it to the DIPLOMAT, and he can tell us all about it when we return." "Yes, that's what I WILL do," said Nechludoff with boyish obstinacy, "so hurry up with your return."
"Ah, but Nechludoff will not go there," objected Woloda. "O unbearable, insupportable man of quiet habits that you are!" cried Dubkoff, turning to Dimitri. "Yet come with us, and you shall see what an excellent lady my dear Auntie is." "I will neither go myself nor let him go," replied Dimitri. "Let whom go? The DIPLOMAT? Why, you yourself saw how he brightened up at the very mention of Auntie."
If we THOUGHT others better than ourselves, we should LOVE them better than ourselves: but that is never the case. And even if it were so, I should still be right," I added with an involuntary smile of complacency. For a few minutes Nechludoff was silent. "I never thought you were so clever," he said with a smile so goodhumoured and charming that I at once felt happy.
How I liked those moments, too, when, carried higher and higher into the realms of thought, we suddenly felt that we could grasp its substance no longer and go no further! At carnival time Nechludoff was so much taken up with one festivity and another that, though he came to see us several times a day, he never addressed a single word to me.
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