wife. He was
silent the whole evening. Finally there was a very enthusiastic and
tousle-headed schoolboy of eighteen, who sat with the gloomy air of a
young man whose dignity has been wounded, evidently distressed by his
eighteen years. This infant was already the head of an independent
group of conspirators which had been formed in the highest class of the
gymnasium, as it came out afterwards to the surprise of every one.

I haven't mentioned Shatov. He was there at the farthest corner of the
table, his chair pushed back a little out of the row. He gazed at the
ground, was gloomily silent, refused tea and bread, and did not for one
instant let his cap go out of his hand, as though to show that he was
not a visitor, but had come on business, and when he liked would get up
and go away. Kirillov was not far from him. He, too, was very silent,
but he did not look at the ground; on the contrary, he scrutinised
intently every speaker with his fixed, lustreless eyes, and listened
to everything without the slightest emotion or surprise. Some of the
visitors who had never seen him before stole thoughtful glances at him.
I can't say whether Madame Virginsky knew anything about the existence
of the quintet. I imagine she knew everything and from her husband.
The girl-student, of course, took no part in anything; but she had an
anxiety of her own: she intended to stay only a day or two and then to
go on farther and farther from one university town to another "to show
active sympathy with the sufferings of poor students and to rouse
them to protest." She was taking with her some hundreds of copies of a
lithographed appeal, I believe of her own composition. It is remarkable
that the schoolboy conceived an almost murderous hatred for her from the
first moment, though he saw her for the first time in his life; and she
felt the same for him. The major was her uncle, and met her to-day for
the first time after ten years. When Stavrogin and Verhovensky came in,
her cheeks were as red as cranberries: she had just quarrelled with her
uncle over his views on the woman question.

II

With conspicuous nonchalance Verhovensky lounged in the chair at the
upper end of the table, almost without greeting anyone. His expression
was disdainful and even haughty. Stavrogin bowed politely, but in spite
of the fact that they were all only waiting for them, everybody, as
though acting on instruction, appeared scarcely to notice them. The lady
of the