His voice budded gently, but with the same quality that had flung her back solid and alone into the cold gloom.
“We must consider” ... what did he think had happened? He had kissed a foreign woman. Who did he think was hearing him? .... “what you would do under certain circumstances.” The last words came trembling, and he sat down clearly visible in the restored blue twilight; waiting with willing permanence for her words.
“I should do nothing at all, under any circumstances.”
“Do not forget that I am Jew.”
Looking at him with the eyes of her friends Miriam saw the Russian, standing free, beyond Europe, from the stigma of “foreigner.” Many people would think, as she had in the beginning, that he was an intellectual Frenchman, different to the usual “Frenchman”; a big-minded cosmopolitan at any rate; a proud possession. The mysterious fact of Jewishness could remain in the background ...... the hidden flaw ... as there was always a hidden flaw in all her possessions. To her, and to her adventure, its first step now so far away, an accepted misery powerless to arrest the swift rush of the transforming moments, it need make no difference.
“Perhaps it shall be better I should go away.”
Where? Into the world of people, who would seem to him not different to herself, see his marvellous surrendered charm, catch him, without knowing who or what he was. Who else could know “Mr. Shatov”?
“Do you want to go away?”
“I do not. But it must be with you to decide.”
“I don’t see why you should go away.”