Читать книгу When I Was Czar онлайн

38 страница из 105

“An ignorance you can easily correct. But no, you are right, it must not be yet,” I exclaimed hastily.

I had no right to invite confidence from her until she knew who I really was. But my exclamation surprised her.

“Why not yet—from your side?”

“I cannot tell you. How long will M. Boreski be?”

She wrinkled her brow at the question.

“You mean you would first know what my connexion with his scheme is? A somewhat shallow trust yours, after all.”

“It may seem so, but I did not mean that.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Her eyes again sought mine as if to read my thoughts. I threw up a blockading smile.

“How long will he be?”

“You play with me,” she exclaimed petulantly. “I do not make a pleasant plaything. M. Boreski will be here soon now. He will find some one to take his place and play hare to your police dogs—the dogs that were not to have been set upon us.”

“‘Us’?” I repeated with a lift of the eyebrows. “You do identify yourself with him then?”

She laughed.

“That is a man’s retort. Suspicion for suspicion; and it serves me right. Now that the time has come, I am not myself. I am too anxious. I do not understand—Americans. You make me feel as no other man as ever yet made me feel.”