“This champagne is awfully good,” he said, filling his glass again.
“What were you going to say?” Anthony asked.
“I don't know—nothing.”
Anthony tried to conceal his disappointment. Sergius had seemed to be on the verge of over-leaping the barrier which lay between them. Once that barrier was overleapt, or broken down, Anthony felt that the mission he had imposed upon himself would stand a chance of being accomplished, that his gnawing anxiety would be laid to rest. But once more Sergius diffused around him a strange and cold atmosphere of violent and knowing reserve. He went away from the table and sat down close to the fire. From there he threw over his shoulder the remark:—
“No man or woman ever understands another—really.”
III
Anthony did not reply for a moment and Sergius continued:—
“You, for instance, could never guess what I should do in certain circumstances.”
“Such as—”
“Oh, in a thousand things.”