"I am not coming," he said, turning almost threateningly to confront her, and looking her straight in the face as though trying to recognize her true nature through her outward mask; "if you should absolutely need me, you understand—only if you do absolutely need me—you can come back and fetch me."
She went away without another word, and he stood there before his own door, with his hand on the key as though it had refused to turn in the lock. He could not bring himself to enter, it was beyond his power; neither could he go forward in that other path he had begun to tread. He felt as if he were doomed to stand there for all eternity, before a closed door of which he held the key.
Meanwhile Antiochus had reached home. His mother locked the door and he went to wash up the glasses and put them away; and the first glass he washed in the clean water was the one from which he had drunk. The boy dried it very carefully with a white cloth, which he passed round and round inside with his thumb; then he held it up to the flame of the lamp and examined it with one eye, keeping the other screwed up, which had the effect of making the glass shine like a big diamond. Then he hid it away in a secret cupboard of his own with as much reverence as if it had been the chalice of the Mass.
Chapter 11
Paul had gone home too, and was feeling his way upstairs in the dark: he dimly remembered going up some stairs in the dark like this when he was a boy, but he could not remember where it had been. Now, as then, he had the feeling that there was some danger near him which he could only escape by strict attention to what he was doing. He reached the landing, he stood before his own door, he was safe. But he hesitated an instant before opening it, then crossed over and tapped lightly with the knuckle of his forefinger at his mother's door and entered without waiting for a reply.
"It is I," he said brusquely; "don't light the candle, I have something to tell you."
He heard her turning round in her bed, the straw mattress creaking under her: but he could not see her, he did not want to see her; their two souls must speak together in the darkness as though they had already passed to the world beyond.
"Is it you, Paul? I was dreaming," she said in a sleepy yet frightened voice; "I thought I heard dancing, some one playing on the flute."