?" she asked, and in the following second answered herself,
starting: "Maybe there is still--" and immediately forcing herself
with a great effort, she said sternly: "I'm caught. No use."

She looked around, and her thoughts flashed up in sparks and expired in
her brain one after the other.

"Leave the valise? Go away?"

But at the same time another spark darted up more glaringly: "How much
will be lost? Drop the son's word in such hands?"

She pressed the valise to herself trembling. "And to go away with it?
Where? To run?"

These thoughts seemed to her those of a stranger, somebody from the
outside, who was pushing them on her by main force. They burned her,
and their burns chopped her brain painfully, lashed her heart like
fiery whipcords. They were an insult to the mother; they seemed to be
driving her away from her own self, from Pavel, and everything which
had grown to her heart. She felt that a stubborn, hostile force
oppressed her, squeezed her shoulder and breast, lowered her stature,
plunging her into a fatal fear. The veins on her temples began to
pulsate vigorously, and the roots of her hair grew warm.

Then with one great and sharp effort of her heart, which seemed to
shake her entire being, she quenched all these cunning, petty, feeble
little fires, saying sternly to herself: "Enough!"

She at once began to feel better, and she grew strengthened altogether,
adding: "Don't disgrace your son. Nobody's afraid."

Several seconds of wavering seemed to have the effect of joining
everything in her; her heart began to beat calmly.

"What's going to happen now? How will they go about it with me?" she
thought, her senses strung to a keener observation.

The spy called a station guard, and whispered something to him,
directing his look toward her. The guard glanced at him and moved
back. Another guard came, listened, grinned, and lowered his brows. He
was an old man, coarse-built, gray, unshaven. He nodded his head to
the spy, and walked up to the bench where the mother sat. The spy
quickly disappeared.

The old man strode leisurely toward the mother, intently thrusting his
angry eyes into the mother's face. She sat farther back on the bench,
trembling. "If they only don't beat me, if they only don't beat me!"

He stopped at her side; she raised her eyes to his face.

"What are you looking at?" he asked in a moderated voice.

"Nothing."

"Hm! Thief! So old and yet----"

It