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.

"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. Come along."

"But I haven't got a ticket."

"Tickets, as many as you like, at the entrance."

"Very well, then; I'll be back in a minute," said Woloda evasively as
he left the room. I knew very well that he wanted to go, but that he
had declined because he had no money, and had now gone to borrow five
roubles of one of the servants--to be repaid when he got his next
allowance.

"How do you do, DIPLOMAT?" said Dubkoff to me as he shook me by the
hand. Woloda's friends had called me by that nickname since the day when
Grandmamma had said at luncheon that Woloda must go into the army, but
that she would like to see me in the diplomatic service, dressed in a
black frock-coat, and with my hair arranged a la coq (the two essential
requirements, in her opinion, of a DIPLOMAT).

"Where has Woloda gone to?" asked Nechludoff.

"I don't know," I replied, blushing to think that nevertheless they had
probably guessed his errand.

"I suppose he has no money? Yes, I can see I am right, O diplomatist,"
he added, taking my smile as an answer in the affirmative. "Well, I have
none, either. 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. "Why don't you say that
you have no money? Here, take my ticket."

"But what are you going to do?"

"He can go into his cousin's box," said Dubkoff.

"No, I'm not going at all," replied Nechludoff.

"Why?"

"Because I hate sitting in a box."

"And for what reason?"

"I don't know. Somehow I feel uncomfortable there."

"Always the same! I can't unders