XXVI. DISCUSSIONS

Woloda was lying reading a French novel on the sofa when I paid my usual
visit to his room after my evening lessons. He looked up at me for a
moment from his book, and then went on reading. This perfectly simple
and natural movement, however, offended me. I conceived that the glance
implied a question why I had come and a wish to hide his thoughts from
me (I may say that at that period a tendency to attach a meaning to the
most insignificant of acts formed a prominent feature in my character).
So I went to the table and also took up a book to read. Yet, even before
I had actually begun reading, the idea struck me how ridiculous it was
that, although we had never seen one another all day, we should have not
a word to exchange.

"Are you going to stay in to-night, Woloda?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Oh, because--" Seeing that the conversation did not promise to be
a success, I took up my book again, and began to read. Yet it was a
strange thing that, though we sometimes passed whole hours together
without speaking when we were alone, the mere presence of a
third--sometimes of a taciturn and wholly uninteresting person--sufficed
to plunge us into the most varied and engrossing of discussions. 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.