Katerin’s lips moved as if to reply, but she did not speak. She had recovered her caution. She wanted to evade the answer, for once more she had built up a mental resistance against him and was beginning to be afraid. She realized that if she pretended to be a stranger in the city she would defeat his purpose if he had really come from friends, by misleading him. If she told him that she was a stranger in the city he would be thrown entirely off the track and never suspect that she was Katerin Stephanovna Kirsakoff.
“I have been in Chita long enough to know it well,” she said. “And I have been here long enough to be willing to go, too.”
“Then you have friends here,” he said. “You must know many of the people—the wealthy people, that is.”
“They are almost all gone—or dead. Most of them are in Vladivostok, or in hiding here. But we cannot get away now—it is impossible for us to leave by ourselves. We wait for our friends—to send us help.” That should be plain enough for him, she thought.
“How would they send help?” he asked. “You mean that they would send soldiers?”
“Perhaps they would send a man who would be able to take us away from the city—they might even send a—foreigner. A man Zorogoff would not dare to hinder from going with us.”
Peter now had full understanding of her searching looks, her broad hints about help, and her surprise at finding that he spoke perfect Russian though supposed to be an American. Also, he saw her reason for coming to him as a samovar girl—unless she was really a spy delving into his object for being in the city.
“I am sorry I have been so stupid,” he said. “You must think I am a fool—but I am not a messenger sent by your friends.”
Katerin was standing at the far end of the table from him, close by the door. He saw her turn pale, either with sudden fear of him, or great disappointment that she had revealed to him that she was expecting a messenger. She was calm enough, but he saw that his admission that he was not the expected messenger, chilled her with some unaccountable terror.
It was this that had terrified Katerin: This American now denied that he was seeking her father—but where had Ilya gotten the word that an American was hunting for Michael Kirsakoff? And this American was really a Russian! Could it be that instead of being a friend, or from friends, he was in reality an enemy? What could this man want with her father? she asked herself. He could not have come from friends, else he would have easily recognized her. And if he had asked Rimsky for the whereabouts of Michael Kirsakoff and was willing that the old cigarette-seller and Ilya Andreitch the pig-killing moujik should know that he was seeking Kirsakoff, why was he not willing that she should know of his quest? She saw that he was willing to ally himself with peasants but withheld the object of his coming to the city from aristocrats. She saw that she had failed in misleading him as to her class. He gave his secrets to peasants—thus he must be an enemy to her father and herself!