‘Why did you leave your old lodging?’ Bersenyev asked him.
‘This is cheaper, and nearer to the university.’
‘But now it’s vacation.... And what could induce you to stay in the town in summer! You should have taken a country cottage if you were determined to move.’
Insarov made no reply to this remark, and offered Bersenyev a pipe, adding: ‘Excuse me, I have no cigarettes or cigars.’
Bersenyev began smoking the pipe.
‘Here have I,’ he went on, ‘taken a little house near Kuntsovo, very cheap and very roomy. In fact there is a room to spare upstairs.’
Insarov again made no answer.
Bersenyev drew at the pipe: ‘I have even been thinking,’ he began again, blowing out the smoke in a thin cloud, ‘that if any one could be found—you, for instance, I thought of—who would care, who would consent to establish himself there upstairs, how nice it would be! What do you think, Dmitri Nikanorovitch?’
Insarov turned his little eyes on him. ‘You propose my staying in your country house?’
‘Yes; I have a room to spare there upstairs.’