Nastasia noticed this with satisfaction. She was in full dress this evening; and her appearance was certainly calculated to impress all beholders. She took his hand and led him towards her other guests. But just before they reached the drawing-room door, the prince stopped her, and hurriedly and in great agitation whispered to her:
“You are altogether perfection; even your pallor and thinness are perfect; one could not wish you otherwise. I did so wish to come and see you. I—forgive me, please—”
“Don’t apologize,” said Nastasia, laughing; “you spoil the whole originality of the thing. I think what they say about you must be true, that you are so original.—So you think me perfection, do you?”
“Yes.”
“H’m! Well, you may be a good reader of riddles but you are wrong there, at all events. I’ll remind you of this, tonight.”
Nastasia introduced the prince to her guests, to most of whom he was already known.
Totski immediately made some amiable remark. All seemed to brighten up at once, and the conversation became general. Nastasia made the prince sit down next to herself.
“Dear me, there’s nothing so very curious about the prince dropping in, after all,” remarked Ferdishenko.
“It’s quite a clear case,” said the hitherto silent Gania. “I have watched the prince almost all day, ever since the moment when he first saw Nastasia Philipovna’s portrait, at General Epanchin’s. I remember thinking at the time what I am now pretty sure of; and what, I may say in passing, the prince confessed to myself.”
Gania said all this perfectly seriously, and without the slightest appearance of joking; indeed, he seemed strangely gloomy.