“Oh, well, they have just come from America.” The woman in the crimson blouse shrugged her shoulders too a little before making that statement. “The time is drawing near,” she interjected, as if speaking to herself. “I did not tell them who you were. Yakovlitch would have wanted to embrace you.”
“Is that he with the wisp of hair hanging from his chin, in the long coat?”
“You’ve guessed aright. That’s Yakovlitch.”
“And they could not find their way here from the station without you coming on purpose from Zurich to show it to them? Verily, without women we can do nothing. So it stands written, and apparently so it is.”
He was conscious of an immense lassitude under his effort to be sarcastic. And he could see that she had detected it with those steady, brilliant black eyes.
“What is the matter with you?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. I’ve had a devil of a day.”
She waited, with her black eyes fixed on his face. Then—
“What of that? You men are so impressionable and self-conscious. One day is like another, hard, hard—and there’s an end of it, till the great day comes. I came over for a very good reason. They wrote to warn Peter Ivanovitch of their arrival. But where from? Only from Cherbourg on a bit of ship’s notepaper. Anybody could have done that. Yakovlitch has lived for years and years in America. I am the only one at hand who had known him well in the old days. I knew him very well indeed. So Peter Ivanovitch telegraphed, asking me to come. It’s natural enough, is it not?”
“You came to vouch for his identity?” inquired Razumov.