“Yesterday, after supper. Grandmother and my sister don’t know I am here yet. No one saw me but Marina.”
She threw some white garments that lay beside her into the next room, pushed aside a bundle and brought a table to the window. Then she sat down again, with a manner quite unconstrained, as if she were alone.
“I have prepared coffee,” she said. “Will you drink it with me. It will be a long time before it is ready at the other house. Marfinka gets up late.”
“I should like it very much,” he replied, following her with his eyes. Like a true artist he abandoned himself to the new and unexpected impression.
“You must have forgotten me, Vera,” he remarked after a pause, with an affectionate note in his voice.
“No,” she said, as he poured out the coffee, “I remember everything. How was it possible to forget you when Grandmother was for ever talking about you?”
He would have liked to ask her question after question, but they crowded into his brain in so disconnected a fashion that he did not know where to begin.
“I have already been in your room. Forgive the intrusion,” he said.
“There is nothing remarkable here,” she said hastily, looking around as if something not intended for strange eyes might be lying about.
“Nothing remarkable, quite right. What book is that?”