'We must speak to Solomin.'
'Yes . . . Solomin . . .' Nezhdanov drawled. 'But he too, I suppose, is in some danger. The police will seize him too. It strikes me he has done more and known more about it than I.'
'I know nothing about that,' said Marianna. 'He never talks about himself.'
'Unlike me in that!' thought Nezhdanov. 'That was what she meant! Solomin . . . Solomin,' he repeated after a long silence. 'Do you know, Marianna, I should not pity you, if the man with whom you had linked your life for ever had been like Solomin . . . or had been Solomin himself.'
Marianna, in her turn, looked intently at Nezhdanov.
'You had no right to say that,' she said finally.
'I'd no right! How am I to understand those words? Do they mean that you love me? or that I ought not any way to touch on that question?'
'You had no right to say it,' repeated Marianna.
Nezhdanov's head drooped.
'Marianna!' he articulated in a somewhat changed voice.
'Well?'
'If I were now . . . if I put you that ques-
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