"You don't know me. You don't remember me. But I know and remember you. You asked me once how I knew. That's how. I've been where you were."
He paused.
"If my youth were here, Nina, it would be at your feet. As it is, it rose out of its grave to salute you. It follows you now, sometimes, like an unhappy ghost."
It was as if he had told her that his youth loved her; that she had not gone altogether unclaimed and undesired; she had had her part in him.
Then she remembered that, if she was his youth, Laura was his manhood.
She knew that none of these things were what he had come to say.
He said it lingering in the doorway, after their good-night. He had got to go, he said, next week to Manchuria. Brodrick was sending him.
She stood there staring at him, her haggard face white under the blow. Her mouth opened to speak, but her voice died in her tortured throat.
He turned suddenly from her and went up the stairs. The door fell to between them.
She groped her way about the room as if it were in darkness. When her feet touched the fur of the tiger-skin by the hearth she flung herself down on it. She had no thought in her brain nor any sense of circumstance. It was as if every nerve and pulse in her body were gathered to the one nerve and the one pulse of her heart.