Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/224

218 something intensely interesting. In the grey shroud of everyday life some dark, dreadful vistas opened, full of noiselessly moving shadows.

"Indeed, the occupation of a spy must be very interesting. A spy risks a great deal, and how he risks! One spy was even killed! He was slaughtered like a hog!"

For a moment he was frightened, and wanted to cease being a spy, but the teacher's skin into which he was to return was so meagre, dull, and repulsive that he inwardly renounced it, and his face assumed as forbidding an expression as it could. The student girl no longer looked at him, but her whole youthful figure, the tip of her pink ear which peeped from under her heavy hair, her body bent slightly forward, and her chest working slowly and deeply, betrayed her terrible agitation and her one thought of escape. She must have been dreaming of wings, of wings. Twice she made an irresolute step, and slightly turned her head toward Mitrofan, but her flushed cheek felt his penetrating gaze, and she became as petrified. Her hand remained on the platform rail, and her black glove, torn at the middle finger, quivered slightly. She felt ashamed that everybody saw her torn glove and the protruding finger, her tiny, orphan-like, and timid finger—and yet she was powerless to take off her hand.

"Ah!" thought Mitrofan Krilov. "There you are! There is no escape for you. That's a good lesson for you; you'll know how to do such things.