neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Borís, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg’s move, and watched his opponent’s face, evidently thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was engaged on.
“Well, how are you going to get out of that?” he remarked.
“We’ll try to,” replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing his hand.
At that moment the door opened.
“Here he is at last!” shouted Rostóv. “And Berg too! Oh, you petisenfans, allay cushay dormir !” he exclaimed, imitating his Russian nurse’s French, at which he and Borís used to laugh long ago.
“Dear me, how you have changed!”
Borís rose to meet Rostóv, but in doing so did not omit to steady and replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his friend, but Nikoláy avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere, Nikoláy wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him—a thing everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Borís embraced him in a quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times.
They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when young men take their first steps on life’s road, each saw immense changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had taken place in them.