'You will see,' she said, 'all this will be explained into something
very prosaic.'

'I hope it may! But you need not use that word. There is nothing
prosaic about Insarov, though Shubin does maintain----'

'Shubin!' Elena broke in, shrugging her shoulders. 'But you must
confess these two good men gobbling up porridge----'

'Even Themistocles had his supper on the eve of Salamis,' observed
Bersenyev with a smile.

'Yes; but then there was a battle next day. Any way you will let me
know when he comes back,' said Elena, and she tried to change the
subject, but the conversation made little progress. Zoya made her
appearance and began walking about the room on tip-toe, giving them
thereby to understand that Anna Vassilyevna was not yet awake.

Bersenyev went away.

In the evening of the same day a note from him was brought to Elena.
'He has come back,' he wrote to her, 'sunburnt and dusty to his very
eyebrows; but where and why he went I don't know; won't you find out?'

'Won't you find out!' Elena whispered, 'as though he talked to me!'