The lady did not reply at once. She took a step forward, looked slowly around the room, and sank into a chair as if her legs had collapsed under her from faintness or fatigue. Her pale lips moved silently, trying to utter words which would not come.
“Is my husband here?” she asked at last, raising her large eyes with their red and swollen lids to Pasha’s face.
“What husband do you mean?” Pasha whispered, suddenly taking such violent fright that her hands and feet grew as cold as ice. “What husband?” she repeated beginning to tremble.
“My husband—Nikolai Kolpakoff.”
“N-no, my lady. I don’t know your husband.”
A minute passed in silence. The stranger drew her handkerchief several times across her pale lips, and held her breath in an effort to subdue an inward trembling, while Pasha stood before her as motionless as a statue, gazing at her full of uncertainty and fear.
“So you say he is not here?” asked the lady. Her voice was firm now and a strange smile had twisted her lips.
“I—I—don’t know whom you mean!”
“You are a revolting, filthy, vile creature!” muttered the stranger looking at Pasha with hatred and disgust. “Yes, yes, you are revolting. I am glad indeed that an opportunity has come at last for me to tell you this!”
Pasha felt that she was producing the effect of something indecent and foul on this lady in black, with the angry eyes and the long, slender fingers, and she was ashamed of her fat, red cheeks, the pock-mark on her nose, and the lock of hair on her forehead that would never stay up. She thought that if she were thin and her face were not powdered, and she had not that curl on her forehead, she would not feel so afraid and ashamed standing there before this mysterious, unknown lady.