Even the ante-room was filled with
smoke.
In the light Soloveitchik appeared to be a young dark-eyed Jew with
curly hair, small features, and bad teeth which, as he was continually
smiling, were always displayed.
The newcomers were greeted with a noisy chorus of welcome. Yourii saw
Sina Karsavina sitting on the window-sill, and instantly everything
seemed to him bright and joyous, as if the meeting were not in a stuffy
room full of smoke, but at a festival amid fair green meadows in
spring.
Sina, slightly confused, smiled at him pleasantly.
"Well, sirs, I think we are all here, now," exclaimed Soloveitchik,
trying to speak in a loud, cheery way with his feeble, unsteady voice,
and gesticulating in ludicrous fashion.
"I beg your pardon, Yourii Nicolaijevitch; I seem to be always pushing
against you," he said, laughing, as he lurched forward in an endeavour
to be polite.
Yourii good-humouredly squeezed his arm.
"That's all right," he said.
"We're not all here, but deuce take the others!" cried a burly, good-
looking student. His loud tradesman's voice made one feel that he was
used to ordering others about.
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