"

"Nothing to hide."

"Then why do you make Boris suffer so? Why don't you marry him?"

"Because I don't wish to leave you, mamma dear."

She escaped further parley by jumping up on the garden edge away from
Khor, who had just been set free for the day.

"The dear child," said Matrena; "the dear little one, she little knows
how much pain she has caused us without being aware of it, by her ideas,
her extravagant ideas. Her father said to me one day at Moscow, 'Matrena
Petrovna, I'll tell you what I think--Natacha is the victim of the
wicked books that have turned the brains of all these poor rebellious
students. Yes, yes; it would be better for her and for us if she did not
know how to read, for there are moments--my word!--when she talks very
wildly, and I have said to myself more than once that with such ideas
her place is not in our salon hut behind a barricade. All the same,' he
added after reflection, 'I prefer to find her in the salon where I can
embrace her than behind a barricade where I would kill her like a mad
dog.' But my husband, dear little monsieur, did not say what he really
thinks, for he loves his daughter more than all the rest of the world
put together, and there are things that even a general, yes, even a
governor-general, would not be able to do without violating both divine
and human laws. He suspects Boris also of setting Natacha's wits awry.
We really have to consider that when they are married they will read
everything they have a mind to. My husband has much more real respect
for Michael Korsakoff because of his impregnable character and his
granite conscience. More than once he has said, 'Here is the aide I
should have had in the worst days of Moscow. He would have spared me
much of the individual pain.' I can understand how that would please
the general, but how such a tigerish nature succeeds in appealing to
Natacha, how it succeeds in not actually revolting her, these young
girls of the capital, one never can tell about them--they get away from
all your notions of them."

Rouletabille inquired:

"Why did Boris say to Michael, 'We will return together'? Do they live
together?"

"Yes, in the small villa on the Krestowsky Ostrov, the isle across from
ours, that you can see from the window of the sitting-room. Boris chose
it because of that. The orderlies wished to have camp-beds prepared for
them right here in the general's house, by a natural devotion to him;
but I opposed it, in o