Michael Petroff laid his hand pompously but protectingly on his friend's shoulder. "You work in the garden," said he, "you water the flowers. How could he have the face to expect you to pay money? That is perfectly simple. But perhaps you too have relations outside who pay for you?"
"Relations?"
"Yes. Outside—there!" A bitter smile curved Michael Petroff's beautiful boyish mouth. Should he tell this little old man in the woolen shawl where he really was? Should he perhaps explain to this little old man with the grayish wrinkled face, that there was an "outside"—where one could even get into a railway train or wash one's hands before sitting down to table? Suddenly he stood up on his tiptoes and instantly lost all conception of his own actual body; he seemed to himself like a gigantic tower rising up to the clouds, and looking down on the little baldheaded man, who had only two thin tufts of gray hair above his ears. He was seized with the desire to make the lawyer cry.
But suddenly he bowed slightly to his friend and said: "Please forgive Michael Petroff!" He walked across the room, then turned to his guest and said in precisely his usual tone: "Will the fair weather last today?"
"I think so—I am not sure," answered the lawyer doubtfully.
"Well, we will play cricket this afternoon. Are you cold?"
"Yes," whispered the lawyer and drew his scarf closer.
Michael Petroff gazed at him with his head on one side. "I cannot understand how you can be cold today." And he laughed gaily. "Come," said he, "let us—" he paused, for he did not know what he wanted to do—"Let us—Oh yes, let us go and see Friend Engelhardt. Come!—The Doctor was with him last night," he ended mysteriously.
"The Doctor?"
"Yes. Our friend is ill. Hm, hm." Michael Petroff carefully locked up the manuscript of his newspaper, put on a big gray English traveling cap, looked in the glass, and they left the room together. Michael Petroff laughed a soft guttural laugh. At Engelhardt's door they paused to listen, and then knocked.—