floor in her room were the pink checks stamped with traces of footsteps, one of them bore the letter F. and some figures.... Plus and minus fused within my mind into one lump.... I could not say even now what sort of a feeling it was but I crushed her so that she cried out with pain....
One more minute out of these ten or fifteen; her head thrown back, lying on the bright white pillow, her eyes half closed, a sharp, sweet line of teeth.... And all this reminded me in an irresistible, absurd, torturing way about something forbidden, something not permissible at that moment. More tenderly, more cruelly, I pressed her to myself, more bright grew the blue traces of my fingers....
She said, without opening her eyes (I noticed this), “They say you went to see the Well-Doer yesterday, is it true?”
“Yes.”
Then her eyes opened widely and with delight I looked at her and saw that her face grew quickly paler and paler, that it effaced itself, disappearing,—only the eyes remained.
I told her everything. Only for some reason, what I don’t know—(no, it is not true, I know the reason) I was silent about one thing: His assertion at the end that they needed me only in order....
Like the image on a photographic plate in a developing fluid, her face gradually reappeared; the cheeks, the white line of teeth, the lips. She
stood up and went to the mirror-door of the closet. My mouth was dry again. I poured water but it was revolting to drink it; I put the glass back on the table and asked:
“Did you come to see me because you wanted to inquire...?”
A sharp, mocking triangle of brows drawn to the temples looked at me from the mirror. She turned around to say something but said nothing.