“How is one to tell?” growled the sergeant. “Once I begin to believe you there are lots of things you might say.”
“I’ve told you the truth,” asserted Zinaida once more.
“Well, just be careful,” said the sergeant with dignity. “We’ll find out all the same. You are sure you’ve returned him home?”
“Yes, home to his mother,” replied Zinaida.
“Very well, I shall report that to the Captain of the police.” He told a lie for dignity’s sake. It was the Commissary of the police who sent him here, and not the Captain. But it was all the same to Zinaida. She had got quite accustomed to thinking mostly about the children and her work. The stern reference to the police authorities did not impress her very much.
The police sergeant left. He kept up his broad smile. He looked back several times at the instructress. He was gay and flustered all the way to town. His thoughts were coarse and detestable. Such are the thoughts of the savages who take shelter in the grey expanses of our towns—savages who hide under all sorts of masks, and who strut about in all sorts of clothes.
Zinaida looked sadly after the police sergeant. Coarse recollections of former days revived in her soul, now full of delicious soothings of a different, blessed existence created by Trirodov in the quiet coolness of the beloved wood. Then Zinaida sighed as if awakened from a midday nightmare. She went quietly her own way.
In the course of several days Trirodov’s colony was visited by the Commissary of the police. He comprehended and considered the chaste world of the Prosianiya Meadows in the same way as the illiterate sergeant. Only this consideration expressed itself in a milder form.
The Commissary of the police tried to be very amiable. He paid awkward compliments to Trirodov and his instructresses. But when he looked at the instructresses the Commissary smiled as detestably as the sergeant. His small, narrow eyes, which resembled those of a Kalmyk, became oily with pleasure. His cheeks became covered with a brick-red ruddiness.
When the girls walked off to one side he gave a wink at Trirodov in their direction, and said in a sotto voce: