And the mutinous protest:
“His words are a lie! His preachings the ravings of despair. There was no miracle, there is none, and there will not be!”
Kirsha, very agitated, ran out of the room. The sensitive and painful feeling of aloneness seized Trirodov as in a sticky net, entangled his legs, and obstructed his glances with grey.
A quiet boy entered, smiling, and handed him a card, on which, under a princely crown, was the lithographed inscription:
Immanuel Osipovitch Davidov.[36]
In a voice dark and deep with suppressed excitement Trirodov said to the boy:
“Ask him to come in.”
The provoking and unanswerable question persisted in his mind:
“Why, why has he come? What does he want of me?”
With an avidly curious glance he looked at the door, and did not take his eyes away. He heard the measured, unhastening footsteps, nearer and nearer—as if his fate were approaching.