“Do I look depressed? Well, I must confess I rather am. It’s no laughing matter, Maria Gavrilovna,” he said, flushing.
“Oh, well, if you are going to talk like that. That is I myself haven’t the slightest doubt about it. Only you frighten me so. If this thing is going to last another week it will drive me mad.” Her childish eyes shone with tears. “Why should you take such a gloomy view of it? I must say it’s cruel of you, Pavel Vassilyevich. Everything is just as I expected. He is as good as free, I assure you.”
Pavel answered, by way of consoling himself as well as her: “Well, maybe I do take it too hard. Our chances seem to be good, and—well, we must get him out. That’s all there is to it.”
“Of course we must. Now I like you, Boulatoff. We must and we will, and when the story is published—oh, I do wish we could get out special proclamations!—anyhow, won’t it make a stir!” She paused and then resumed, in a new burst of frankness, “I know what makes you uneasy about me. The great trouble with me is my lack of tact, isn’t it? If I had that I would be all right. That’s what worries you about me in this affair, isn’t it, now? You’re afraid I may make a mess of the whole business. I know you are. Well, and I don’t blame you, either. The Safonoffs have never been distinguished for their heads. When it happens to be a matter of hearts, we hold our own, but brains, well—.” She gave a laugh. “I tell you what, Boulatoff, I’m afraid of you, and I don’t care to bear the brunt of this important affair. Anyhow, I want you to keep an eye on me. I’ll do all you want me to, but you must take the responsibility off my shoulders, else I’ll go crazy. What makes you smile? You think I’m crazy already, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t smiling at all. So far you have managed things beautifully. I confess I’m getting impatient. Well, I do feel wretched, Maria Gavrilovna.”
She grasped his hand, shook it silently and whispered: “Don’t be uneasy. We shall win.”
When Safonoff came home at the lunch hour he told of the excitement at the gendarme office. His manner toward Boulatoff was a non-committal mixture which seemed to say: “You and I understand each other perfectly, don’t we? Still, if you think you can get me to call a spade a spade or to help you you are mistaken.”
His compact, well-fed figure had the shape of a plum. He was perpetually mimicking somebody or chuckling and his speech was full of gaps, many of his sentences being rendered in dumb show.
“My chief may get in trouble for having ordered the arrest too soon,” he said. “We were to let the prisoner—” (he brandished his hand to represent a man going around at large) “for some time, so as to let him show us with whom he is acquainted. But my chief—” (he struck an attitude meant to caricature a decrepit, coughing, old fellow) “was all of a tremble for fear the canary-bird might take wing. You see he had never arrested a political before. You should have seen our men when we took that chap on the railroad track. They were more frightened than he, I assure you, prince. They thought he was going to—” (he aimed an imaginary dagger at Pavel and burst into laughter). “Monsieur Unknown is certainly no coward whatever else he may be. You should have seen the look of surprise and contempt he gave me!”
Pavel beamed while Masha’s face wore a pained expression. “It’s time you had left this nasty business of yours, Andrusha,” she said.