I saw that his plain face, which was now adorned with a thin stubbly beard, was much emaciated. His former careless smile was now quite gone, and his features were darkened and bronzed like a peasant’s.
“I?” He smiled, but with his lips only, that were always drawn: once with suffering, now with having suffered. “I? You never would guess. I married down there; yes, I married a fellow-exile. And we have a son.”
“But what of your health? And what are you going to do in Warsaw?”
“Something or other.” He raised his hand, palm down, then let it drop limply. “At present I am more or less amongst the unemployed. Besides, I am consumptive.... On the whole, prospects not very brilliant.”
I asked him to come to my lodgings.
He looked uneasy. “Are you living with—them?” he asked.
“No; now no longer.”
“Ah, that’s very good.... Professor Obojanski told me fearful things about you, and they grieved me. He must have been exaggerating: he bears you a deep grudge for having broken with him so. For he appreciates you very highly indeed. He counts your having thrown yourself away like that as the greatest disappointment he ever had in his life.”
So we went down the road, chatting about old times. He informed me that Roslawski had gone off on some Polar expedition. I used to call him the “Autocrat of the Ice-plains”: it seems that he belongs to them at any rate.
“But now,” Smilowicz blurted out, rather bashfully, “hadn’t you better come and see us? I have told Sophy (my wife) all about you; she would like to make your acquaintance, and does not know anybody in Warsaw. And you will see Andy, my little boy!”