conversation. . . . Valentina Mihalovna had taken her husband's place and was speaking out even more freely, even more radically than he. She could not comprehend, 'positively could not com-pre-hend,' how a man of education, still young, could adhere to old-fashioned conventionalism like that!
'I am sure, though,' she added, 'that you only say so for the sake of a paradox! As for you, Alexey Dmitritch,' she turned with a cordial smile to Nezhdanov (he was inwardly amazed that she knew his name and his father's), 'I know you don't share Semyon Petrovitch's apprehensions; Boris described to me your talks with him on the journey'.
Nezhdanov flushed, bent over his plate, and muttered something unintelligible; he was not so much shy as unaccustomed to exchange remarks with such distinguished personages. Madame Sipyagin still smiled upon him; her husband supported her patronisingly. . . . But Kallomyetsev deliberately stuck his round eyeglass between his nose and his eyebrow, and stared at the student who dared not to share his 'apprehensions.' But to confuse Nezhdanov in that way was a difficult task; on the contrary, he drew himself up at once, and stared in his turn at the fashionable official; and just as suddenly as he had felt a comrade
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