ought. I have not had time yet.'

Insarov spoke Russian perfectly correctly, pronouncing every word
fully and purely; but his guttural though pleasant voice sounded
somehow not Russian. Insarov's foreign extraction (he was a Bulgarian
by birth) was still more clearly marked in his appearance; he was a
young man of five-and-twenty, spare and sinewy, with a hollow chest
and knotted fingers; he had sharp features, a hooked nose, blue-black
hair, a low forehead, small, intent-looking, deep-set eyes, and bushy
eyebrows; when he smiled, splendid white teeth gleamed for an instant
between his thin, hard, over-defined lips. He was in a rather old but
tidy coat, buttoned up to the throat.

'Why did you leave your old lodging?' Bersenyev asked him.

'This is cheaper, and nearer to the university.'

'But now it's vacation. . . . And what could induce you to stay in the
town in summer! You should have taken a country cottage if you were
determined to move.'

Insarov made no reply to this remark, and offered Bersenyev a pipe,
adding: 'Excuse me, I have no cigarettes or cigars.'

Bersenyev began smoking the pipe.

'Here have I,' he went on, 'taken a little house near Kuntsovo, very
cheap and very roomy. In fact there is a room to spare upstairs.'

Insarov again made no answer.