“Perhaps you could help me,” she said thoughtfully. “But I know little about you—what part of Russia are you from?”
Peter hesitated. It would not do to tell her he had been a boy in Chita for that news would start gossip, and he would be under suspicion at once if Kirsakoff were killed. He drank some tea before he answered the question.
“Oh, I have not been in Russia for years—I left Kiev when I was a boy. Come! What is your name? We must be friends if we are going to go into these matters.”
“What is your name?” she countered.
“Call me Peter—that is my name.”
“Peter! That is no name for a Russian. What are your other names?”
“Peter Petrovitch.”
She laughed at him with a touch of saucy insouciance, and lifted her shoulders as if she put small faith in the name. “What is your generic name?”
“Gordon, but I hoped you might call me Peter Petrovitch—it has been many years since I heard it thus. You make me forget that I am an American, I, who am Russian.”
She turned toward the door. “I am afraid that I must go now,” she said.