Suddenly he raised his eyes again and looked at her. There it was again, that dark caressing glance--cold, and yet how seductive!
She shrank back frightened, and was more frightened still at the thought that he might have seen her shrinking away from him.
He gave a scarcely perceptible smile, and went on again with his book; and still she continued to weave anxious and flattering thoughts around him--thoughts that were criminal in themselves, which descended on her like an avalanche that she hadn't the power to ward off. And then, all at once, with an icy chill at her heart, she felt a soft, tender pressure on her left foot, which she must by accident have thrust towards the centre of the gangway, for a moment before it had been resting on her right foot, which was still pressed close to the door of the compartment.
What was to be done? An indignant "I beg your pardon," an angry rising from her seat, would have awakened the colonel, and given cause for fresh suspicion and perhaps a duel. So she slowly, with extreme caution, withdrew her foot from under his and pressed it against the cushions, to be quite sure that she had rescued it. But she felt that the moment of hesitation had made her a participator in the crime, and this conviction oppressed and weighed on her more than her train of sinful thoughts had a few minutes before tormented her.
In her own eyes she appeared dishonoured, polluted, a prey to any and every licentious man who crossed her path. But why blame him? Was not his impertinently expressed desire merely the fulfilment of her own impure wishes? The reflection half suffocated her. She wanted to spring up, cry aloud, and ask to be forgiven. The stranger, however, went on reading calmly, as if nothing at all had occurred.
There was a glimmer of grey dawn when Lilly started up out of a half-waking doze. She saw a waterfall tossing its white foam beneath her; beyond towered huge moss-crowned rocks against the sky. It was a picture she had dreamed of, but never seen, appealing and impressive in its rugged grandeur and massive strength. All that had passed before she fell asleep seemed now a grotesque phantasmagoria devoid of reality. She glanced round the carriage nervously, and saw the stranger stretched out at full length, repulsive in sleep, his cheeks inflated and puffy as his breath came and went in heavy gasps. He looked to her now pasty and effeminate, and she loathed him.
She turned away in disgust and caught her husband's eyes wide open, fixed on her in severe reproof. She started guiltily.
"Can't you sleep any longer?" she asked, with a forced smile.
"I have not slept at all," he answered.
There was something in his voice that set her trembling anew. It accused and condemned at the same time. And how angrily he looked at her!