The smile, however, suddenly disappeared from Alexandra Petrovna's face; her forehead puckered, and her lips moved rapidly and vehemently. Directly afterwards she smiled again, but wickedly and maliciously, and with her head made a slow gesture of disapproval. "Perhaps they are talking about me," thought Romashov, not without a certain disagreeable anxiety; but he knew how something pure, chaste, agreeably soothing and benevolent beamed on him from this young woman who, at that moment, made the same impression on him as a charming canvas, the lovely picture of which reminded him of happy, innocent days of long ago. "Shurochka," whispered Romashov tenderly. At that moment Alexandra Petrovna lifted her face from her work and cast a rapid, searching, despondent glance at the window. Romashov thought she was looking him straight in the face. It felt as if a cold hand had seized his heart, and in his fright he hid himself behind a projection of the wall. Again he was irresolute and ill at ease, and he was just about to return home, when, by a violent effort of the will, he overcame his pusillanimity and walked through a little back-door into the kitchen. The Nikoläievs' servant relieved him of his muddy goloshes, and wiped down his boots with a kitchen rag. When Romashov pulled out his pocket-handkerchief to remove the mist from his eyeglass he heard Alexandra Petrovna's musical voice from the drawing-room. "Stepan, have they brought the orders of the day yet?" "She said that with an object," thought Romashov to himself. "She knows well enough that I'm in the habit of coming about this time." "No, it is I, Alexandra Petrovna," he answered aloud, but in an uncertain voice, through the open drawing-room door. "Oh, it's you, Romashov. Well, come in, come in. What are you doing at the side entrance? Volodya, Romashov is here." Romashov stepped in, made an awkward bow, and began, so as to hide his embarrassment, to wipe his hands with his handkerchief. "I am afraid I bore you, Alexandra Petrovna." He tried to say this in an easy and jocose tone, but the words came out awkwardly, and as it seemed to him, with a forced ring about them. "What nonsense you talk!" exclaimed Alexandra Petrovna. "Sit down, please, and let us have some tea." Looking him straight in the face with her clear, piercing eyes, she squeezed as usual his cold fingers with her little soft, warm hand. Nikoläiev sat with his back to them at the table that was almost hidden by piles of books, drawings, and maps. Before the year was out he had to make another attempt to get admitted to the Staff College, and for many months he had been preparing with unremitting industry for this stiff examination in which he had already twice failed. Staring hard at the open book before him, he stretched his arm over his shoulder to Romashov without turning round, and said, in a calm, husky voice--