“Yes ... Solomin ...” Nejdanov drawled out. “But he is also in danger. The police would arrest him too. It seems to me that he also took part in things and knew even more than we did.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mariana observed. “He never speaks of himself!”
“Not as I do!” Nejdanov thought. “That was what she meant to imply. Solomin ... Solomin!” he added after a pause. “Do you know, Mariana, I should not be at all sorry if you had linked your fate forever with a man like Solomin ... or with Solomin himself.”
Mariana gave Nejdanov a penetrating glance in her turn. “You had no right to say that,” she observed at last.
“I had no right! In what sense am I to take that? Does it mean that you love me, or that I ought not to touch upon this question generally speaking?”
“You had no right,” Mariana repeated.
Nejdanov lowered his head.
“Mariana!” he exclaimed in a slightly different tone of voice.
“Yes?”
“If I were to ask you now ... now ... you know what.... But no, I will not ask anything of you ... goodbye.”