I asked Countess Yaskov what she thought of the psychology of Rudd's Russian. I said she ought to be a good judge. She laughed and said:
"Yes, I ought to be a good judge. I think he is rather severe on the Slavs, don't you? He makes that poor Anikin so very complicated, and so very sly and fickle as well."
I said I thought the excuses which Rudd credited the Russian with making to himself for breaking off the engagement with the heroine of the book, were absurd.
"Do you think the Russian said those things or that the novelist invented them?" she asked.
I said I thought he had said what he was reported to have said.
"If he said that, he was not lying," she said.
I agreed, and I also thought he had said all that; but that Rudd's explanation of his words was wrong. If that was true he must have broken off his engagement.
"There is nothing very improbable in that, is there?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said. And yet I thought that Kranitski had finished with whatever there was in the past that might have been an obstacle to his present.
"Did he tell you that?" she asked.