“Is it all settled?”
“Oh, Pasha! Your jesting is so out of place,” she returned sullenly. “I am not going.”
“But the air is getting hot in St. Petersburg. Whew! The police are suspicious, of course; they won’t leave a stone unturned.”
He took hold of her tender girlish hand, but she withdrew it again, with a gesture of impatience.
“There will be something to do for you too later on,” he comforted her, guiltily. “It’s going to be a big thing, the biggest of all. You’ll come back in a month or so.”
She made no answer.
The two intersecting streets outside reeked and creaked and glittered with the crispness of a typical St. Petersburg frost. It was about ten in the morning, in the early part of January. The little parlour was delightfully warm, with a dim consciousness of sleigh-furs, hack drivers in absurd winter caps, pedestrians huddling themselves and wriggling and grunting for an effeminating background to one’s sense of shelter. The even heat of the white glazed oven seemed to be gleaming and stirring over the surface of the tiles like something animate, giving them an effect of creamy mellowness that went to one’s heart together with the delicious warmth they radiated. Ever and anon a sleigh bell would tinkle past and sink into Pavel’s mood. There was a rhythm to the warm stillness of the room. But Clara’s silence tormented him.
“We’ll discuss it later on, Clanya. I’m too tired now. My brain won’t work. Let us play school,” he pleaded fawningly, in burlesque Russian, mimicking the accent of the Czech who taught Latin at the Miroslav gymnasium.
“Stop that, pray.”