Iwin (who for some reason or other avoided me). With some of these new
friends I grew quite intimate, and even Ikonin plucked up sufficient
courage to inform me, when we next met, that he would have to undergo
re-examination in history--the reason for his failure this time being
that the professor of that faculty had never forgiven him for last
year's examination, and had, indeed, "almost killed" him for it.
Semenoff (who was destined for the same faculty as myself--the
faculty of mathematics) avoided every one up to the very close of the
examinations. Always leaning forward upon his elbows and running his
fingers through his grey hair, he sat silent and alone. Nevertheless,
when called up for examination in mathematics (he had no companion
to accompany him), he came out second. The first place was taken by a
student from the first gymnasium--a tall, dark, lanky, pale-faced fellow
who wore a black folded cravat and had his cheeks and forehead dotted
all over with pimples. His hands were shapely and slender, but their
nails were so bitten to the quick that the finger-ends looked as though
they had been tied round with strips of thread. All this seemed to me
splendid, and wholly becoming to a student of the first gymnasium.
He spoke to every one, and we all made friends with him. To me in
particular his walk, his every movement, his lips, his dark eyes, all
seemed to have in them something extraordinary and magnetic.

On the day of the mathematical examination I arrived earlier than usual
at the hall. I knew the syllabus well, yet there were two questions
in the algebra which my tutor had managed to pass over, and which were
therefore quite unknown to me. If I remember rightly, they were the
Theory of Combinations and Newton's Binomial. I seated myself on one of
the back benches and pored over the two questions, but, inasmuch as I
was not accustomed to working in a noisy room, and had even less time
for preparation than I had anticipated, I soon found it difficult to
take in all that I was reading.

"Here he is. This way, Nechludoff," said Woloda's familiar voice behind
me.

I turned and saw my brother and Dimitri--their gowns unbuttoned, and
their hands waving a greeting to me--threading their way through the
desks. A moment's glance would have sufficed to show any one that they
were second-course students--persons to whom the University was as a
second home. The mere look of their open gowns expressed at once disdai