“Julia,” whispered Kostovsky, breathless with excitement.
“Sit down!” she said carelessly, not noticing anything especial in his appearance, and added: “And try to occupy yourself with something. I really haven’t any time to entertain you.”
“Julia!”
She half-leaned upon the bed and became wholly absorbed in her book.
He was irritated by this woman’s unnecessary artfulness; why use these artifices, which offended him the more, because she could easily tell him outright and settle it?
“Julia, you speak to me as to a visitor who has to be entertained? Why this ceremony?”
“There is no ceremony about it!” she replied in a displeased tone. “It—simplifies our relations, that is all: every one occupies himself—with what he pleases. I am—reading. And you occupy yourself with something else, and if you feel ennui—go away.”
She was driving him out.
Kostovsky was beside himself with rage at this “simplifying of relations,” and at her sudden leaving off of the familiar “thou” and adopting the more conventional “you.”
“Listen to me,” he said, in a voice full of irritation, and likewise availing himself of the term “you.” “I wish to speak to you, and will not wait till you finish reading.”