"Where is Okoya?"
"He has left."
"Will he come again?"
"Oh, yes," breathed Mitsha softly; then she turned over, sighed, and spoke no more.
Hannay was happy. The boy would return! That was all she cared for. She really liked him, for he was so candid, so good, and so simple-minded. With such a son-in-law much was possible, she thought. Okoya could certainly be moulded to become a very useful tool to her as well as to Tyope. The woman felt elated over the results of the evening; she felt sure that notwithstanding one egregious mistake, of which of course she would be careful not to speak, her husband would be pleased with her management of affairs. It was long after midnight when that husband returned to the roof of his wife, and Hannay was already fast asleep.
Okoya had gone long before Hannay thought of returning. He went home happy, and satisfied that Mitsha henceforth belonged to him. And yet after all there was a cloud on his mind,—not a very threatening one, yet a cloud such as accompanies us everywhere, marring our perfect happiness whenever we fancy we have attained it. Mitsha had said to him, while they were alone,—
"If you were only Koshare, the sanaya would give me to you."
Okoya thereupon imagined that without Hannay's consent he could never obtain the maiden. On the other hand, the idea of joining the Delight Makers did not at all suit him. He feared in that case the opposition of his mother. After he had returned to the estufa and lain down among the other boys, who were mostly asleep, he revolved the matter in his mind for a long time without arriving at any conclusion whatever. Had he been less sincere and less attached to his mother, such scruples would hardly have troubled him; had he owned more experience he would have known that his apprehensions were groundless, and that Hannay could not, if she wished, prevent him from becoming Mitsha's husband.