“Blood?”
“Yes.”
I must say frankly that I even liked him at that moment.
“How did you get it?”
“From my hand.”
“From your hand? But how did you manage to hide yourself from the eye that is watching you?”
He smiled cunningly, and even winked.
“Don’t you know that you can always deceive if only you want to do it?”
My sympathies for him were immediately dispersed. I saw before me a man who was not particularly clever, but in all probability terribly spoiled already, who did not even admit the thought that there are people who simply cannot lie. Recalling, however, the promise I had made to the Warden, I assumed a calm air of dignity and said to him tenderly, as only a mother could speak to her child:
“Don’t be surprised and don’t condemn me for being so strict, my friend. I am an old man. I have passed half of my life in this prison; I have formed certain habits, like all old people, and submitting to all rules myself, I am perhaps overdoing it somewhat in demanding the same of others. You will of course wipe off these drawings yourself—although I feel sorry for them, for I admire them sincerely—and I will not say anything to the administration. We will forget all this, as if nothing had happened. Are you satisfied?”