delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne. The
silence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he
looked round at every one with expectant eyes.

"Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don't you begin doing
something?" his smiling eyes seemed to ask.

"He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing," Kalganov began
suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.

Mitya immediately stared at Kalganov and then at Maximov.

"He's talking nonsense?" he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming
suddenly delighted at something--"ha ha!"

"Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers
in the twenties married Polish women. That's awful rot, isn't it?"

"Polish women?" repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.

Kalganov was well aware of Mitya's attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed
about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did
not interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov. He had
come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for
the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew before, and had once been
with some one to see her; but she had not taken to him. But here she
looked at him very affectionately: before Mitya's arrival, she had been
making much of him, but he seemed somehow to be unmoved by it. He was a
boy, not over twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very charming
fair-skinned face, and splendid thick, fair hair. From his fair face
looked out beautiful pale blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes
even deep expression, beyond his age indeed, although the young man
sometimes looked and talked quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed
of it, even when he was aware of it himself. As a rule he was very
willful, even capricious, though always friendly. Sometimes there was
something fixed and obstinate in his expression. He would look at you and
listen, seeming all the while to be persistently dreaming over something
else. Often he was listless and lazy, at other times he would grow
excited, sometimes, apparently, over the most trivial matters.

"Only imagine, I've been taking him about with me for the last four days,"
he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally though, without
the slightest affectation. "Ever since your brother, do you remember,
shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That made me take an
interest in him at the time, and I