Youth by Leo Tolstoy Chapter 27 Page 9

upon his elbow, looked at me in silence, with a kindly, yet abashed, expression. Evidently he found it difficult to do this, yet meant thus to punish himself.

Then I smiled and returned his gaze, and he smiled back at me.

“Why do you not tell me that my conduct has been abominable?” he said. “You have been thinking so, have you not?”

“Yes,” I replied; and although it was something quite different which had been in my mind, it now seemed to me that that was what I had been thinking. “Yes, it was not right of you, nor should I have expected it of you.” It pleased me particularly at that moment to call him by the familiar second person singular. “But how are your teeth now?” I added.