I know him slightly. At first he'll
shout: 'KELLNER, champagne!' then burst into tears about his wife,
who is an angel, then deliver a patriotic speech and finally raise
a row over the bill, but none too loudly. All in all he's
entertaining."
"Let him come," said Volodya, from behind the shoulder of Katie,
who was sitting on his knees, swinging her legs.
"And you, Veltman?"
"What?" the student came to with a start. He was sitting on the
divan with his back to his companions, near the reclining Pasha,
bending over her, and already for a long time, with the
friendliest appearance of sympathy, had been stroking her, now on
the shoulder, now on the hair at the nape of the neck, while she
was smiling at him with her shyly shameless and senselessly
passionate smile through half-closed and trembling eyelashes.
"What? What's it all about? Oh yes,--is it all right to let the
actor in? I've nothing against it. Please do ..."
Yarchenko sent an invitation through Simeon, and the actor came
and immediately commenced the usual actor's play. In the door he
paused, in his long frock coat, shining with its silk lapels, with
a glistening opera hat, which he held with his arm in the middle
of his chest, like an actor portraying in the theatre an elderly
worldly lion or a bank director.
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