By this time even louder and more angry exclamations had begun to ascend from Gubin. Yet the only sound to reach my ears was the woman's muttered whispering, and as I glanced into her face I perceived that its hitherto high-coloured and rounded contours had fallen in, and turned grey, and that her flushed lips were trembling to such an extent as almost to prevent the articulation of her words. Lastly, her eyes were frozen into an expression of pitiful, doglike terror.
Suddenly she shrugged her shoulders, straightened her form, put away from her the expression of terror, and said quietly, but incisively:
"You will not need to say anything about this. Allow me."
And with a swaying step she departed—a step so short as almost to convey the impression that her legs were bound together. Yet while the gait was the gait of a person full of suppressed fury, it was also the gait of a person who can scarcely see an inch in advance.
"Haul away, you!" shouted Gubin.
I hauled him up in a state of cold and wet; whereafter he fell to stamping around the coping of the well, cursing, and waving his arms.
"What have you been thinking of all this time?" he vociferated. "Why, for ever so long I shouted and shouted to you!"
"I have been telling Nadezhda that last night you saw her walking in the garden."
He sprang towards me with a vicious scowl.
"Who gave you leave to do so?" he exclaimed.