“You do not know me, Mr. Hardross?”
“It is a pleasure I have but looked forward to,” he replied, in the formal manner that at times irresistibly seized him, “with the keenest possible anticipation and....”
“No, I am Madame Peshkov. We are from Odessa, do you know it? We go back to our Russia tomorrow; yes, it is true.”
His organs of comprehension began to crackle in his skull, but he went on stirring his fresh cup of tea and continued to do so for quite a long time.
“No, you ... are ... Russian! I did not know.” Amid his musing astonishment that fact alone was portentous; it explained so much, everything in fact, but how he could ever contrive to learn such a language was the question that agitated him, so fearfully difficult a language, and on his fingers too! Then that other thunderclap began to reverberate: they were going, when was it? Tomorrow! All this while Madame Peshkov ran on with extravagant volubility. She had the habit of picking one of the hairpins from her hair and gently rubbing her scalp with the rounded end of it; she would replace the pin with a stylish tap of her fingers. It was a long time before Hardross extracted the pith from her remarks, and then only when the hypnotism induced by the stirring of his tea suddenly lapsed; he became aware of the dumb girl’s gaze fixed piercingly upon him, while his own was drawn away by the force of the other’s revelations. What he had already taken in was sad and strange. Her name was Julia Krasinsky. She was not at all related to Madame Peshkov, she was an orphan. Madame’s own daughter had been deaf and dumb, too, and the girls had been inseparable companions until two years ago, when Natalia Peshkov had died—O, an unspeakable grief still. He gathered that Madame was a widow, and that since Natalia’s death the two women had lived and travelled together. Madame talked on; it was tremendously exciting to Hardross crouching in his chair, but all that echoed in his mind were the words Julia Krasinsky, Julia Krasinsky, until she suddenly asked him:
“Do you love her?”
He was startled by this appalling directness; he stammered a little but he finally brought out:
“I adore her. Beyond everything I deeply deeply love her.” He then added: “I feel shameful enough now. I rage inwardly. All these many weeks I have dallied like a boy, I did not understand the situation. I have wasted our chances, our time, and now you are going.”
“You can’t waste time”; retorted the abrupt lady. “Time deals with you no matter how you use his hours.”
“I suppose so,” he agreed quite helplessly, “but we might have been extraordinary friends.”