Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/222

216 papers under her waist. There was a time when they used to carry love letters on their breasts—now they carry bulletins. And what an absurd name—bulletins."

He cast another furtive glance at her in order to verify his expression, then he turned aside. The student girl gazed at him continuously, as though bewitched, and she pressed her hand firmly against her left side. Krilov grew angry.

"What a fool! Since I wear blue eyeglasses I must be, according to her ideas, a spy. But she does not understand that a man's eyes may be sore from hard work. How naïve she is. Just think of it! And these people undertake to do work to save the fatherland. What she needs is a milk bottle and not a fatherland. No, we are not ripe yet. Lasalle, for instance—his was a great mind! But here every beetle is trying to do things! She can't solve a simple mathematical problem, and yet she is bothering about finance, politics, documents. You deserve to be scared properly—then you will know what you are about!"

Mitrofan Krilov drew his head into his shoulders with a sharp gesture, his face assumed a cunning and mean expression which, in his opinion, was peculiar to real spies, and he cast a sinister look at the girl which almost turned his eyes out. And he was satisfied with his work: the girl shuddered and quivered with fear, and her eyes began to wander alarmedly.