..."
He was tempted to flight at the mere recollection of his first meeting
with Nathalie Haldin. He confessed it to himself; but he did not move,
and that not because he wished to resist an unworthy weakness, but
because he knew that he had no place to fly to. Moreover, he could
not leave Geneva. He recognized, even without thinking, that it was
impossible. It would have been a fatal admission, an act of moral
suicide. It would have been also physically dangerous. Slowly he
ascended the stairs of the terrace, flanked by two stained greenish
stone urns of funereal aspect.
Across the broad platform, where a few blades of grass sprouted on the
discoloured gravel, the door of the house, with its ground-floor windows
shuttered, faced him, wide open. He believed that his approach had
been noted, because, framed in the doorway, without his tall hat, Peter
Ivanovitch seemed to be waiting for his approach.
The ceremonious black frock-coat and the bared head of Europe's greatest
feminist accentuated the dubiousness of his status in the house rented
by Madame de S--, his Egeria. His aspect combined the formality of the
caller with the freedom of the proprietor. Florid and bearded and masked
by the dark blue glasses, he met the visitor, and at once took him
familiarly under the arm.
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