was sewing. The reading
aloud had ceased for the moment because Dimitri had left the room on
some errand or another.

"Or perhaps you have read Rob Roy before?" she added.

At that period I thought it incumbent upon me, in virtue of my student's
uniform, to reply in a very "clever and original" manner to every
question put to me by people whom I did not know very well, and regarded
such short, clear answers as "Yes," "No," "I like it," or "I do not care
for it," as things to be ashamed of. Accordingly, looking down at my new
and fashionably-cut trousers and the glittering buttons of my tunic, I
replied that I had never read Rob Roy, but that it interested me greatly
to hear it, since I preferred to read books from the middle rather than
from the beginning.

"It is twice as interesting," I added with a self-satisfied smirk;
"for then one can guess what has gone before as well as what is to come
after."

The Princess smiled what I thought was a forced smile, but one which I
discovered later to be her only one.

"Well, perhaps that is true," she said. "But tell me, Nicolas (you will
not be offended if I drop the Monsieur)--tell me, are you going to be in
town long? When do you go away?"

"I do not know quite. Perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps not for some while
yet," I replied for some reason or another, though I knew perfectly well
that in reality we were to go to-morrow.

"I wish you could stop longer, both for your own sake and for
Dimitri's," she said in a meditative manner. "At your age friendship is
a weak thing."

I felt that every one was looking at me, and waiting to see what I
should say--though certainly Varenika made a pretence of looking at
her aunt's work. I felt, in fact, as though I were being put through an
examination, and that it behoved me to figure in it as well as possible.

"Yes, to ME Dimitri's friendship is most useful," I replied, "but to HIM
mine cannot be of any use at all, since he is a thousand times better
than I." (Dimitri could not hear what I said, or I should have feared
his detecting the insincerity of my words.)

Again the Princess smiled her unnatural, yet characteristically natural,
smile.

"Just listen to him!" she said. "But it is YOU who are the little
monster of perfection."

"'Monster of perfection,'" I thought to myself. "That is splendid. I
must make a note of it."

"Yet, to dismiss yourself, he has been extraordinarily clever in that
quarter," she went on in a l