‘Leave off tramping from corner to corner, please,’ he observed, knocking the ash off his cigar. ‘I keep expecting you to speak; there’s a rick in my neck from watching you. Besides, there’s something artificial, melodramatic in your striding.’
‘You can never do anything but joke,’ responded Nikolai Artemyevitch. ‘You won’t enter into my position, you refuse to realise that I am used to that woman, that I am attached to her in fact, that her absence is bound to distress me. Here it’s October, winter is upon us. ... What can she be doing in Revel?’
‘She must be knitting stockings—for herself; for herself—not for you.’
‘You may laugh, you may laugh; but I tell you I know no woman like her. Such honesty; such disinterestedness.’
‘Has she cashed that bill yet?’ inquired Shubin.
‘Such disinterestedness,’ repeated Nikolai Artemyevitch; ‘it’s astonishing. They tell me there are a million other women in the world, but I say, show me the million; show me the million, I say; ces femmes, qu’on me les montre! And she doesn’t write—that’s what’s killing me!’
‘You’re eloquent as Pythagoras,’ remarked Shubin; ‘but do you know what I would advise you?’
‘What?’
‘When Augustina Christianovna comes back—you take my meaning?’
‘Yes, yes; well, what?’