'What do I not know, Stella?' he said, mastering himself with a violent effort, and speaking in a calm, unmoved tone.
'Oh, it would be stupid to tell you. Let us talk of something else—the weather, for instance.'
This little attempt at recovering something of her old gaiety smote him to the heart.
'No, I cannot talk of anything else, Stella. I want you to speak to me of yourself. You know, in the old days, we agreed to be friends. We can at least be friends.'
'Yes, yes; we can be friends,' she said, and then she suddenly began to sob.
He kept perfectly silent. When she had recovered composure, he went on in the same calm voice as before.
'You know, Stella, friends should help one another. I think there is something you dread. Tell me what it is. I may be able to help you.'
'Are you afraid, too?' she said quickly. He did not reply immediately. He felt like one groping in the dark, afraid to move too quickly lest harm should be done. Then she added hesitatingly: 'I have been afraid for some time. The voices and the faces have gone away. But there is a silence coming round me, and every day I am more alone—an abyss between me and everyone that none can cross.'
'No, no, Stella; not so. How many care for you!'
'But I cannot care for them—not in the old way. There is a strange vacancy, an apathy; it comes creeping, creeping. It is like the tide rising round a ship that has been stranded. O my God, it is horrible—it is horrible!' She covered her face with her hands, and as he looked at her in tearless agony, he trembled as if in an ague fit. 'Do you know what I keep thinking of sometimes?' she said, suddenly looking up. 'Of some old story in Ovid, where one says: "Give me your hand before I am a serpent all over." Those old stories where people were turned into birds, and trees, and reptiles, they are not so terrible as—as some other things.'