it to me! I'll burn it!" Nejdanov burst out. "That's all it's fit
for!

"Then why did you take it with you? No, I won't let you burn it.
However, authors are always threatening to burn their things, but they
never do. I will put it in my room."

Nejdanov was just about to protest when Mariana rushed into the next
room with the copy-book and came back without it.

She sat down beside him, but instantly got up again. "You have not yet
been in my room; would you like to see it? It's quite as nice as yours.
Come and look."

Nejdanov rose and followed her. Her room, as she called it, was somewhat
smaller than his, but the furniture was altogether smarter and newer.
Some flowers in a crystal vase stood on the window-sill and there was an
iron bedstead in a corner.

"Isn't Solomin a darling!" Mariana exclaimed. "But we mustn't get too
spoiled. I don't suppose we shall often have rooms like these. Do you
know what I've been thinking? It would be rather nice if we could get a
place together so that we need not part! It will probably be difficult,"
she added after a pause; "but we must think of it. But all the same, you
won't go back to St. Petersburg, will you?

"What should I do in St. Petersburg? Attend lectures at the university
or give lessons? That's no use to me now."

"We must ask Solomin," Mariana observed. "He will know best."

They went back to the other room and sat down beside each other again.
They praised Solomin, Tatiana, Pavel; spoke of the Sipiagins and how
their former life had receded from them far into the distance, as
if enveloped in a mist; then they clasped each other's hand again,
exchanged tender glances; wondered what class they had better go among
first, and how to behave so that people should not suspect them.

Nejdanov declared that the less they thought about that, and the more
naturally they behaved, the better.

"Of course! We want to become simple, as Tatiana says."

"I didn't mean it in that sense," Nejdanov began; "I meant that we must
not be self-conscious."

Mariana suddenly burst out laughing.

"Do you remember, Aliosha, how I said that we had both become
simplified?"

Nejdanov also laughed, repeated "simplified," and began musing. Mariana
too became pensive.

"Aliosha!" she exclaimed.

"What is it?"

"It seems to me that we are both a little uncomfortable. Young--des
nouveaux maries," she explained, "when away on their honeymoon no doubt
feel as we do. They are happy.