“Yes. Come in.”
They entered Old Mole’s study, Panoukian first.
“She said she wanted a dog, so I brought her this.”
Panoukian put the puppy on the floor, walked over to the cigarette box and helped himself.
Old Mole opened his mouth to speak, but it was dry and he could make no sound. He ran his tongue over his lips. At last he shot out:
“Panoukian!”
Panoukian was pulling the puppy from under the bookcase. He turned and faced Old Mole with his schoolboy expression of wondering what now might be his guilt. He looked so young that none of the words with which Old Mole was preparing to crush him—scoundrel, traitor, villain, blackguard—was anything but inept. He was just engagingly, refreshingly young; younger than he had ever been, even as a boy. The discontent, the hardness and strain of revolt had faded from his eyes; they were clear and bright. He was as fresh as the morning. Plainly he had no thought beyond the puppy and the pleasure he had hoped to bring with it, and was startled by the harshness of the pedagogic note in Old Mole’s exclamation, startled into shyness.
Old Mole’s determination crumbled away: his laudable resolve was whisked away from him. He excused himself with this:
“I have no right to speak to him before I have come to an understanding with her.”