“With pleasure.... But it was not the school about which I wished to speak to you.”
“What was it then?”
“Tomorrow,” Mariana repeated.
But she did not wait until the next day, and the conversation between her and Nejdanov took place on that same evening in one of the linden avenues not far from the terrace.
XIII
She came up to him first.
“Mr. Nejdanov,” she began, “it seems that you are quite enchanted with Valentina Mihailovna.”
She turned down the avenue without waiting for a reply; he walked by her side.
“What makes you think so?”
“Is it not a fact? In that case she behaved very foolishly today. I can imagine how concerned she must have been, and how she tried to cast her wary nets!”