"Yes, yes," she said hurriedly. "I am very grateful to you, Kirylo
Sidorovitch, for coming at once--like this.... Only, I wish I had....
Did mother tell you?"
"I wonder what she could have told me that I did not know before," he
said, obviously to himself, but perfectly audible. "Because I always did
know it," he added louder, as if in despair.
He hung his head. He had such a strong sense of Natalia Haldin's
presence that to look at her he felt would be a relief. It was she who
had been haunting him now. He had suffered that persecution ever since
she had suddenly appeared before him in the garden of the Villa Borel
with an extended hand and the name of her brother on her lips....
The ante-room had a row of hooks on the wall nearest to the outer door,
while against the wall opposite there stood a small dark table and one
chair. The paper, bearing a very faint design, was all but white. The
light of an electric bulb high up under the ceiling searched that clear
square box into its four bare corners, crudely, without shadows--a
strange stage for an obscure drama.
"What do you mean?" asked Miss Haldin. "What is it that you knew
always?"
He raised his face, pale, full of unexpressed suffering. But that
look in his eyes of dull, absent obstinacy, which struck and surprised
everybody he was talking to, began to pass way.
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