Читать книгу When I Was Czar онлайн

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For answer she just looked at me and smiled. If she did not know the disarming power of her smile I felt it.

“You like to mystify me,” I said.

“Why were you so hard on poor M. Boreski, and why”—she paused as if to calculate the effect of her words—“why do you suspect us of being Nihilists?”

“You? I did not say anything about you. It was M. Boreski.”

“Is that quite candid, M. American?” It was an audacious stroke, considering whom she believed me to be.

“Your assurance would suffice to convince me.”

“You put your sharp questions in flattering covers, monsieur. But your compliments have barbed points.”

“Is it a barbed point that I would trust your word implicitly?”

“If I thought that, oh, if I could think it,” she exclaimed with great earnestness, clasping her hands strenuously.

“Why should you doubt it?”

She turned full upon me.

“Because you do not know me; because——” she broke off and then said steadily, almost defiantly: “I am no Nihilist, nor is M. Boreski.”

“And he has had no dealings with them?” I felt convinced that he had. “I mean to your knowledge?”