the dining-room at lunch. He thought her looking thin and yellow; she was not at all pretty that day; but the rapid glance she flung at him the instant he came into the room went straight to his heart. On the other hand, Valentina Mihalovna looked at him as though she were continually repeating inwardly, 'I congratulate you! Well done! Very smart!' and at the same time she wanted to discover from his face whether Markelov had shown him the letter or not. She decided at last that he had shown it.
Sipyagin, hearing that Nezhdanov had been to the factory of which Solomin was the manager, began cross-questioning him about 'that manufacturing enterprise which presents so many striking points of interest'; but being shortly convinced from the young man's answers that he had really seen nothing there, he relapsed into majestic silence, with the air of reproaching himself for having expected any valuable information from such an undeveloped person! As they left the dining-room, Marianna managed to whisper to Nezhdanov, 'Wait for me in the old birch copse, Alexey; I will come directly I can get away.' Nezhdanov thought, 'She, too, calls me Alexey, just as he did.' And how sweet that familiarity was to him, though rather terrible too! and how strange, and how incredible, if
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