Lanzerotti smiled. "I think you misinterpret. There is undoubtedly some pressure from what might be called public opinion, but—"
"Listen!" cried Heidekopfer, desperately. "It all fits together. Kazetzky twirled something bright in his fingers when he asked Rosa to spend the day with him, and all of them rallied round. They've achieved some kind of mental integration and they want to expand—"
Lanzerotti laid a hand on his knee. "You're talking too loud. And I think on the wrong lines. The nature of this development is essentially elymosynnary—"
Heidekopfer experienced a sensation of being surrounded by stone walls as two of the Tolstoians stood over them. One was a member of the Supreme Soviet whose name he had, of course, forgotten, and the other was a remarkably pretty girl with ash-blond hair pulled back from a well-shaped forehead. He got up, as the man from the Supreme Soviet said, "Sonia Grigorevna is the cousin of the patriarch Pitrim Androvich."
"Heidekopfer, Robert Murrayovich," said Heidekopfer, dutifully.
Lanzerotti repeated his part of the formula, but the girl seemed to be concentrating on the reporter. "Is it not a joy to be in this beautiful countryside?" she said, looking at him directly.
"I find it so."
"Would it be your will to let me show you some of the flowers of happy Tolstoia?" she said.
If he were right, this was his chance to get one of them apart from the rest, where the group pressure would presumably be less effective. He said, "It would please me very much."