saying, he filled his pipe, lighted it with a sort of sigh of relief,
and, after a final order to Matrena, "Go," he went into the garden,
puffing great clouds. Anyone would have said he hadn't smoked in a week.
He appeared not to be thinking but just idly enjoying himself. In fact,
he played like a child with Milinki, Matrena's pet cat, which he pursued
behind the shrubs, up into the little kiosque which, raised on piles,
lifted its steep thatched roof above the panorama of the isles that
Rouletabille settled down to contemplate like an artist with ample
leisure.

The dinner, where Matrena, Natacha and Rouletabille were together again,
was lively. The young man having declared that he was more and more
convinced that the mystery of the bomb in the bouquet was simply a play
of the police, Natacha reinforced his opinion, and following that they
found themselves in agreement on about everything else. For himself, the
reporter during that conversation hid a real horror which had seized him
at the cynical and inappropriate tranquillity with which the young lady
received all suggestions that accused the police or that assumed the
general no longer ran any immediate danger. In short, he worked, or at
least believed he worked, to clear Natacha as he had cleared Matrena,
so that there would develop the absolute necessity of assuming a third
person's intervention in the facts disclosed so clearly by Koupriane
where Matrena or Natacha seemed alone to be possible agents. As he
listened to Natacha Rouletabille commenced to doubt and quake just as he
had seen Matrena do. The more he looked into the nature of Natacha the
dizzier he grew. What abysmal obscurities were there in her nature!

Nothing interesting happened during dinner. Several times, in spite of
Rouletabille's obvious impatience with her for doing it, Matrena went up
to the general. She returned saying, "He is quiet. He doesn't sleep. He
doesn't wish anything. He has asked me to prepare his narcotic. It is
too bad. He has tried in vain, he cannot get along without it."

"You, too, mamma, ought to take something to make you sleep. They say
morphine is very good."

"As for me," said Rouletabille, whose head for some few minutes had been
dropping now toward one shoulder and now toward another, "I have no need
of any narcotic to make me sleep. If you will permit me, I will get to
bed at once."

"Eh, my little domovoi doukh, I am going to carry you there in my arms."

Ma