The woman moved about—a sentence and a silence—cleansing the tea things. An hour passed. The place was bare as before. A plate of sweets was left upon the table, a pitcher of water with a cup beside it, a tin of tobacco and papers. She rolled a cigarette absently, standing by the table, still telling of the long road. She proffered the cigarette to him, suddenly recalling herself.
"I quite forgot," she said. "He taught me to do it for him." She looked at the shut door, from which the breathing issued.
Romney accepted the cigarette gratefully. He spoke very little and quietly, a deep hush upon him. He had been afraid to comment, lest she be aroused and hastily call in the fragments of her story. He was sensitive enough to know that she was easing some tragic ache from her heart. Her voice, her face and figure, the hands that served, the story itself, filled his imagination with pictures and a startling kind of power.
The sense now came to Romney that he could be himself at last. This woman was a flame that freed him. In the light of her, he dared be a full being. He did not feel less, nor was prompted in any way to act or cover. She did not make a slave of him, but called forth such as he had of humour and wisdom. He could see past the flash of her eyes. There had been at times such a surface dazzle in the eyes of the yellow-rug woman that he had not been able to see beyond it, but that dazzle was for him and the world. Nifton Bend doubtless encountered no such difficulty. It was but one of the perfectly appointed barriers that preserved the love-woman for her own.... There was a moment—it was the same that Romney fully realised that he was himself at last—in which the smooth-running levels of Anna Erivan's story changed to rush of a cataract:
"... I have been here a year—do you understand that—a year? I came from Odessa, four thousand miles, by train, by caravan, over mountain passes, across rivers, through wastes of sun and rock.... Days of fever heat, nights of perishing cold—thirst and suffering—four thousand miles, five hundred on the back of a camel.... My mother was just dead, yet all the way I dreamed of the bountiful heart of a big brother I had not seen for years. He was here. All the way from Odessa I came to him.
"The last fifty miles I travelled with Tartar merchants, and learned to know them well. They were not unreal. They were good to me. And yet, I was so frightened. They told me as I neared Nadiram on the road from Urga that their caravan had a thousand miles still to wander through the desert, past ruined cities and along dried-up river-beds to Peking.
"It was evening when we reached here—just as you reached here this evening. I had seen Nadiram spelled out on the maps; I had seen the post-mark on his yearly letter. I had pictured it so differently, and this is what I saw—sun-dried clay, and the low blowing desert and this court-yard with the Russian flag. I had expected him to come forth to meet me. All day I watched. I had started early for the journey's end. I entered the court, but saw no face. The merchants passed on, turning queerly. The door-way was heavy with dust, that door where you entered. I pushed it open, my arms ready to fling about him. I thought he must be busy or detained.
"This room was darkening. It was not as you found it, but sodden and evil—an evil odour. I called, and there was no answer. I was frightened. I had been frightened all day. One does not know what one can stand. That was but the beginning, and I thought I was close to death then.
"Do you know what I found? I will show you—"
She turned quickly to the door and opened it. Romney saw a great bear of a man, half sprawled over a wooden table, the candle sputtering near his head in the fresh pressure from the open door, the sharp fume of brandy issuing. The body seemed swollen, neck and ears, shoulders, abdomen, legs—all swollen, but the top of the head. That was small and sparsely covered with hair, the candle-light upon it. The lips were swollen and parted.