A wonder came
over me that the mysterious force which had torn it out of him had
failed to destroy his life, to shatter his body. It was there unscathed.
I stared at the broad line of his shoulders, his dark head, the amazing
immobility of his limbs. At his feet the veil dropped by Miss Haldin
looked intensely black in the white crudity of the light. He was gazing
at it spell-bound. Next moment, stooping with an incredible, savage
swiftness, he snatched it up and pressed it to his face with both hands.
Something, extreme astonishment perhaps, dimmed my eyes, so that he
seemed to vanish before he moved.
The slamming of the outer door restored my sight, and I went on
contemplating the empty chair in the empty ante-room. The meaning
of what I had seen reached my mind with a staggering shock. I seized
Natalia Haldin by the shoulder.
"That miserable wretch has carried off your veil!" I cried, in the
scared, deadened voice of an awful discovery. "He...."
The rest remained unspoken. I stepped back and looked down at her, in
silent horror. Her hands were lying lifelessly, palms upwards, on her
lap. She raised her grey eyes slowly. Shadows seemed to come and go in
them as if the steady flame of her soul had been made to vacillate
at last in the cross-currents of poisoned air from the corrupted dark
immensity claiming her for its own, where virtues themselves fester into
crimes in the cynicism of oppression and revolt.
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