Part 29 (2/2)
”What? You wrote to him, you fixed a meeting?”
”I went to Phillimore Place, to his house.”
Sergius said nothing. Strange furrows ploughed themselves in his young face, which was growing dusky white. He remained in the att.i.tude of one devoted entirely to listening.
”You hear, Sergius?”
”Go on--when?”
”To-day. I decided to go after I met you yesterday night--and after I had seen that woman die--unprepared.”
”What could she have to do with it?”
”Much. Everything almost.”
Anthony got up now, almost sprang up from his chair. His face was glowing and working with emotion. There was a choking sensation in his throat.
”You don't know what it is,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, ”to a man with--with strong religious belief to see a human being's soul go out to blackness, to punishment--perhaps to punishment that will never end. It's abominable. It's unbearable. That woman will haunt me. Her despair will be with me always. I could not add to that horror.”
His eyes once more sought the clock. Seeing the hour, he turned, with a kind of liberating relief, to Sergius.
”I couldn't add to it,” he exclaimed, almost fiercely, ”so I went to Vernon.”
”Why?”
”Sergius--to warn him.”
There was a dead silence. Even the rain was hushed against the window.
Then Sergius said, in a voice that was cold as the sound of falling water in winter:--
”I don't understand.”
”Because you won't understand how I have learnt to know you, Sergius, to understand you, to read your soul.”
”Mine too?”
”Yes; I've felt this awful blow that's come upon you--the loss of Olga, her ruin--as if I myself were you. We haven't said much about it till yesterday. Then, from the way you spoke, from the way you looked, from what you said, even what you wouldn't say, I guessed all that was in your heart.”
”You guessed all that?”
Sergius was looking directly at Anthony and leaning against the mantelpiece, along which he stretched one arm. His fingers closed and unclosed, with a mechanical and rhythmical movement, round a china figure. The motion looked as if it were made in obedience to some fiercely monotonous music.
”Yes, more--I knew it.”
Sergius nodded.
”I see,” he said.
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