"I say, come out again—just as though nothing had happened. No one noticed anything, only I...."
He turned to me, his face working and with a passionate gesture, in a voice that choked over the words, he cried: "She should not have said it. She should not ... every one there.... She knew how it would wound me.... Semyonov...."
He positively was silent over that name. The mild expression of his eyes, the clumsy kindness of his mouth gave a ludicrous expression to his rage.
"Wait! Wait!" I cried. "Be patient!"
As I spoke I could hear him in the railway carriage:
"I am mad with happiness.... God forgive me, my heart will break."
Breaking from me, despair in his voice, he whispered to the empty room, the desolate row of white beds watching him: "I always knew that I was hopeless ... hopeless ... hopeless."
"Look here," I said. "You mustn't take things so hard. You go up and down.... Your emotions...."
But he only shook his head:
"She shouldn't have said it—like that—before every one," he repeated.