"Please answer me. What is the matter? You both look sick."
"We are under arrest for espionage," Marie and I suddenly burst out in chorus, and we both began talking as fast and as loud as we could.
"That's all right. I'll fix things for you," Peter reassured us when we stopped at last, out of breath. I suddenly wanted to hide him so they wouldn't get him as well as ourselves. He was so self-confident. What did he know of how things happened over here? He was talking and acting like a rational human being, which was sure proof he was in no position to cope with the Russian Secret Service. I felt a frantic desire to get him out of the room and make him promise that on no account would he admit he knew us.
"You must go at once," I whispered. "There's a spy at the door. If he sees you, they'll arrest you, too. Please go, go at once." And I tried to push him away.
"You poor things," he said, laughing. "There's no need to be frightened like this. Of course I won't go. Why should they arrest me?"
"Why should they have arrested us? Oh, you don't know." My teeth were chattering.
"Now, look here," he said seriously. "You've been alone and scared, and I'm sure you haven't eaten anything for days. Now, don't think about this any more. I'll get you out in no time. Have you a cigarette, anybody?"
I sat back, and my body stopped shaking. Everything seemed very still. I had the distinct thought, "What is to come, will come," and I drew a deep breath that seemed to come from my toes. It was enough Peter was here, after all.
We talked till three in the morning. Peter had gone to Bucharest to meet us, and when we didn't arrive, he took the first train to Kiev. I began to believe in his bodily presence. Before he left to go back to his hotel, I had regained my conviction he was a match for even the Russian Secret Service.
Can you imagine how we feel to-day? We go tottering round the room, taking things up and putting them down again, in a nervous anxiety to do something. We chirp the rag-times popular in America two years ago. We feel as though we were just recovering from a sickness, with a pleasant bodily weakness like a convalescent's in the springtime. Peter brought me a bunch of red roses when he came over this morning. I am writing this while he is seeing Mr. Douglas, the English Consul.