“I don’t know. Why?”

“Oh, because — ” Seeing that the conversation did not promise to be a success, I took up my book again, and began to read.

Yet it was a strange thing that, though we sometimes passed whole hours together without speaking when we were alone, the mere presence of a third — sometimes of a taciturn and wholly uninteresting person — sufficed to plunge us into the most varied and engrossing of discussions. The truth was that we knew one another too well, and to know a person either too well or too little acts as a bar to intimacy.

“Is Woloda at home?” came in Dubkoff’s voice from the ante-room.

“Yes!” shouted Woloda, springing up and throwing aside his book.