If my guess was right, my conduct with that infernal women, Paula Tueski, must have been gall and wormwood to Olga.
How should I have relished it had the position been reversed, and Devinsky been in Paula Tueski's place?
These thoughts which flashed across me in rapid succession produced a peculiar frame of mind. I had stood a minute in silence, not looking at her, and when I raised my eyes again I was conscious of sensations toward her, that were altogether different from anything I had felt before. She had become more beautiful than ever in my eyes; I, more eagerly anxious to please and appease; while at bottom there was a dormant fear that I might be mistaken in my new reading of her actions, in which was mixed up another fear, not nearly so strong, that her anger on account of Paula Tueski might really end in our being separated.
My first act shewed the change in me.
I ceased to feel the freedom with which I had hitherto acted the part of brother, and I immediately threw open the door and stood aside that she might go out if she wished. Then I said:—
"Perhaps you are right. My conduct may be inexcusable even to save your life."
Whether there was anything in my manner that touched her—I was conscious of speaking with much less confidence than usual; or whether it was the act of unfastening the door: or whether, again, some subtle influence had set her thoughts moving in parallel columns to mine, I do not know. But her own manner changed quite as suddenly as mine; and when she caught my eyes on her, she flushed and paled with effects that made her radiantly beautiful to me.
She said not a word; and finding this, I continued:—
"I am sorry a cloud has come between us at the last, and through something that was not less hateful to me because forced by the needs of the case. We have been such friends; but...." here I handed her the permit—"you must use this at once."
She took it and read it slowly in silence, and then asked:—