I did not get up and leave him as I very easily might have done. I had had, since the night when Nikitin had spoken to me so frankly, a desire to know the little man's side of that affair. In some curious fashion that silent plain wife of his had been very frequently in my thoughts; there had not been enough in Nikitin's account to explain to me his passion for her, and yet her ghost, as though evoked by the memories both of Nikitin and her husband, had seemed to me, sometimes, to be present with us....
I waited.
"Tell me frankly," Audrey Vassilievitch said at last, "am I of any use here?"
"Of use?" I repeated, taken by surprise.
"Yes. Am I doing only what any one else can do as well? Would it be better perhaps if another were here?"
"No, certainly not," I answered warmly. "Your business training is of the greatest value to us. Molozov has said to me 'that he does not know what we should do without you.'"
(This was not strictly true.)
"Ah!" the little man was greatly pleased. "I am glad, very glad—to hear what you say. Semyonov made me feel—"
"You should not be influenced," I hurriedly interrupted him, "by what Semyonov thinks. It is of no importance."
"He has a bad character," Andrey Vassilievitch said suddenly with great excitement, "a bad character. And why cannot he leave me alone? Why should he laugh always? I do my best. I am quiet and not in his way. I can do things that he cannot. I am not big as he but at least I do not rob men of their women."