Nejdanov rose and followed her. Her room, as she called it, was somewhat smaller than his, but the furniture was altogether smarter and newer. Some flowers in a crystal vase stood on the window-sill and there was an iron bedstead in a corner.
“Isn’t Solomin a darling!” Mariana exclaimed. “But we mustn’t get too spoiled. I don’t suppose we shall often have rooms like these. Do you know what I’ve been thinking? It would be rather nice if we could get a place together so that we need not part! It will probably be difficult,” she added after a pause; “but we must think of it. But all the same, you won’t go back to St. Petersburg, will you?”
“What should I do in St. Petersburg? Attend lectures at the university or give lessons? That’s no use to me now.”
“We must ask Solomin,” Mariana observed. “He will know best.”
They went back to the other room and sat down beside each other again. They praised Solomin, Tatiana, Pavel; spoke of the Sipiagins and how their former life had receded from them far into the distance, as if enveloped in a mist; then they clasped each other’s hand again, exchanged tender glances; wondered what class they had better go among first, and how to behave so that people should not suspect them.
Nejdanov declared that the less they thought about that, and the more naturally they behaved, the better.
“Of course! We want to become simple, as Tatiana says.”
“I didn’t mean it in that sense,” Nejdanov began; “I meant that we must not be self-conscious.”
Mariana suddenly burst out laughing.
“Do you remember, Aliosha, how I said that we had both become simplified?”