Her eyes ran rapidly over the letter.
Then she read it a second time, avidly.
She sank on to the arm of a chair almost fainting.
Kulichok stood at a respectful distance.
"Nikanor Yurevich, did you see my sister?"
"No, Darya Dmitrevna.
The letter was given to me ten days ago by a certain person who told me that Ekaterina Dmitrevna had left Rostov a month before...."
"Ah, God!
Where can she be?
What has happened to her?"
"Unfortunately I had no opportunity of finding out."
"Did you know her husband, Vadim Roshchin?
Killed.... Katya writes—oh, it's too terrible!"
Kulichok raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
The letter shook so in Dasha's thin fingers that he took it and ran his eyes over the lines relating how Valerian Onoli had told Katya of the death of her husband. The corner of Kulichok's lips twitched in a crooked sneer.
"I always thought Onoli capable of baseness.... According to him, Roshchin was killed in May, wasn't he?
Strange.... It seems to me I saw him rather later than that."
"When?
Where?"
But here Kulichok suddenly thrust out his predatory-looking nose, and cast a searching glance at Dasha.
It was a mere matter of a second.
Dasha's eyes, glowing with agitation, her cold, interlaced fingers, spoke to him clearer than words: she might be the wife of a Red officer, but she would never betray him.
Moving nearer to her, he asked:
"Are we alone in the apartment?" ("Yes, yes," said Dasha's hurried nod.) "Darya Dmitrevna, I'm going to tell you something that might endanger my life, if...."
"Are you one of Denikin's officers?"
"Yes."
Dasha pulled at her finger joints, looking miserably out of the window at that unattainable azure....
"You needn't be afraid of me...."
"I was sure of that. And I want to ask you to put me up for a few days."
He said it firmly, almost threateningly.
Dasha bent her head.
"Very well."
"If you're afraid, however.... You're not?" (He sprang back.)
"You're not?" (He advanced again.) "I quite understand.... But you have nothing to fear.... I'm very careful.... I'll only go out at night. Not a soul knows I'm in Petersburg... " (From the lining of his cap he extracted an army identity card.) "See? Ivan Svishchev.
Red Army man.
It's genuine.
I got it with my own hands.... So you would like to know about Vadim Petrovich? ! think there must be some muddle here...."
Here he seized Dasha's hands, pressing them in his own.
"It means you're on our side, Darya Dmitrevna!
Thank you for that!
The whole of the intellectuals, the whole of the insulted and persecuted officer class are rallying around the holy banner of the Volunteer Army.
It's an army of heroes.... You'll see—Russia will be saved, and it is her white hands which will save her.
And let the others take the coarse paws off Russia!
There's been enough sentimentalizing.
The toiling people!
I've just travelled over a thousand miles on the roof of a railway carriage.
I saw the toiling people.
Wild beasts, that's what they are!
I tell you, it's only we, a mere handful of heroes, who keep the true Russia in our hearts.
And we'll fasten our law with a bayonet on the portals of the Tavrichesky Palace."