Fear sprang into her soft eyes. Bobruisk was eighty-nine versts away, yet Ivan said they were going farther.
“We—we are not going to Minsk?” she cried.
“Ay, and beyond Minsk!”
“Ivan, tell me!” she grasped. “Tell me where we are going!”
“We are going to America.”
“To America?”
“Yes, to America!”
Big Ivan of the Bridge lifted up his voice when he cried out the words “To America,” and then a sudden fear sprang upon him as those words dashed through the little window out into the darkness of the village street. Was he mad? America was 8,000 versts away! It was far across the ocean, a place that was only a name to him, a place where he knew no one. He wondered in the strange little silence that followed his words if the crippled son of Poborino, the smith, had heard him. The cripple would jeer at him if the night wind had carried the words to his ear.
Anna remained staring at her big husband for a few minutes, then she sat down quietly at his side. There was a strange look in his big blue eyes, the look of a man to whom has come a vision, the look which came into the eyes of those shepherds of Judea long, long ago.
“What is it, Ivan?” she murmured softly, patting his big hand. “Tell me.”