'Take her that,' he said, thrusting the book into the girl's hands.
Yulia took it, and before she had left the room Omobono was gravely busy with his figures again; but each time he added up a column the sum seemed to be 'cackling hen,' instead of anything reasonable. But Yulia ran upstairs.
Zoë untied the thongs and opened the book in the middle. An exclamation of anger and disgust escaped her lips. The secretary, who did not believe she could really read, though she spoke Latin fluently, had sent an old volume of accounts in answer to her request. There were pages and pages of entries and columns of figures, all neatly written in his small, clear hand, on stout cotton paper. Here and there some one else had made a note, as if checking his work.
Zoë pushed the book away from her on the divan, and it fell over the edge and lay face downwards and open on the floor. Then the little tune began again in her head.
She wished he would open the door noiselessly and be all at once beside her, as on that first evening. That had been Friday, and to-day was Wednesday; five days had gone by. Counting Friday there were six, and six days were practically a week! She had been under his roof a whole week and he had only cared to see her face once.
'He shall pay me for this!'
The tune went on, and she quite forgot how she had longed for death, and how his first anticipated coming had been dreadful beyond anything she had ever suffered, beyond cold, starvation, and misery. Or if she remembered it at all, she told herself that the man she had seen was not the kind of man she had expected, and that she had nothing to fear from him. She was quite sure of that.
She turned on one side, as she half lay on the divan, till she could reach the account-book to pick it up. One of the maids jumped up from the carpet to help her.
'Go away!' she exclaimed crossly, for she had got hold of the cover and had drawn the volume over the edge of the divan. 'I will call if I want anything.'