"If that's the way I look to him, nobody else is going to guess."
When the conductor came, Paul's seat-mate tried to ask if he would have to change cars before reaching his destination, but his language was so broken that he couldn't make himself understood.
"I thought he was Russian," Paul nodded to himself, catching a word here and there; and, aloud, he quietly added in his mother's tongue, "It's all right, batuchka; you don't have to change."
The other gave him a grateful glance, and soon they were talking together.
"A Bolshevist," thought Paul, recognizing now and then a phrase or an argument which he had heard from some of his friends in Rio, "but what's he going to New Bethel for?"
As the train drew nearer the place of his birth, Paul grew quieter. Old landmarks, nearly forgotten, began to appear and remind him of the past.
"What time do we get there?" he asked a passing brakeman.
"Eleven-thirty-four."
Paul's companion gave him a look of envy.
"You speak English well," said he.