Miriam gave instructions delightedly. Mr. Shatov hunched crookedly in his chair, his head thrown up and listening towards her, his eyebrows raised as if he were singing and on his firm small mouth the pursed look of a falsetto note. His brown eyes were filmed, staring averted, as if fixed on some far-away thing that did not move; it was like the expression in the eyes of Mr. Helsing but older and less scornful. There was no scorn at all, only a weary cynically burning knowledge, yet the eyes were wide and beautiful with youth. Yesterday’s look of age and professorship had gone; he was wearing a little short coat; in spite of the beard he was a student, only just come from being one amongst many, surrounded in the crowding sociable foreign way; it gave his whole expression a warmth; the edges of his fine soft richly-dented black hair, the contours of his pale face, the careless hunching of his clothes seemed in a strange generous way unknown in England, at the disposal of his fellow-creatures. Only in his eyes was the contradictory lonely look of age. But when they came round to meet hers, his head still reined up and motionless, she seemed to face the chubby upright determination of a baby, and the deep melancholy in the eyes was like the melancholy of a puppy.
“Pairhaps,” he said, “one of your doctors shall sairtify me for a fit and proper person.”
Miriam stared her double stupefaction. For a moment, as if to give her time to consider his suggestion, his smile remained, still deferential but with the determined boldness of a naughty child lurking behind it; then his eyes fell, too soon to catch her answering smile. She could not, with his determined unaverted and now nervously quivering face before her, either discourage the astounding suggestion or resent his complacent possession of information about her.
“I should tell you,” he apologised gently, “that Mrs. Bailey has say me you are working in the doctors’ quarter of London.”
“They are not doctors,” said Miriam, feeling stiffly English, and in her known post as dental secretary utterly outside his world of privileged studious adventure, “and you want a householder who is known to you and not a hotel or boarding-house keeper.”
“That is very English. But no matter. Perhaps it shall be sufficient that I am graduate.”
“You could go down and see the librarian, you must write a statement.”
“I am a reader, but not a householder.”
“No matter. That is most excellent. You shall pairhaps introduce me to this gentleman. Ah, that is very good. I shall be most happy to find myself in that institution. It is one of my heartmost dreams of England to find myself in midst of all these leeter-aytchoors..... When can we go?”