He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book.

`Mikhail Ivanich, when is your birthday?' he asked, all of a sudden.

`You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other, on which one has to do one's work.'

Seriozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not think what he had said - he felt it from the tone in which it was said. `But why have they all agreed to speak, just in the same manner, always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he keep me off; why doesn't he love me?' he asked himself mournfully, and could not think of an answer.