Page:The Career of a Nihilist.djvu/81

A MIXED PARTY. 67

Tania blushed slightly, and felt vexed with herself, and angry with Andrey, who was the cause of the blush. Her kindly feeling for him vanished at once.

"I will repay your compliment with a vengeance," she said, "for I'm sure I have heard of you more than you can have heard of me, and from various people. So that my information has the advantage of not being one-sided."

"So much the better," said Andrey, "it gives me a claim to get compensation."

The girl's temper was not improved by seeing him so outrageously unconcerned. A delicate swelling, intended to be a frown, appeared between the long eyebrows upon the smooth and pure forehead, which no cares or sorrows had yet furrowed with wrinkles. She was accustomed to have young men show her an obsequious deference, and was not prepared to make an exception in the case of a man who was after all a perfect stranger to her. She was sorry not to have been more formal with him from the beginning.

"You regret, Tatiana Grigorievna, your former kindness, and you think I am abusing it?" Andrey said, reading her thoughts in her face.

"Well, perhaps I am," he went on, without giving her time to answer. " But you must make some allowance for us. The existence of conspirators is short, and the opportunities they have for friendly intercourse are few. We must be excused if we try to make the most of them by sometimes dropping conventional formalities. To-night our ways in life cross for a moment, and nobody can tell whether they will ever cross again. Will you permit me to speak with you quite frankly without reserve, as if we were comrades?"

The ice was broken. Under the calm tone of her strange guest the girl felt something pathetic and melancholy, which touched her generous heart, melting her superficial worldliness. She was ashamed of her suspicious reserve, which now seemed to her quite out of place with this man.

"Yes!" she exclaimed warmly, looking him in the face, "speak as you like."

Andrey was surprised at the pleasure her assent gave him. There was in the girl something which George had probably forgotten to mention, but which attracted him exceedingly, on her own account, independently of the part she might play in his friend's life.