to that horror."

His eyes once more sought the clock. Seeing the hour, he turned, with a
kind of liberating relief, to Sergius.

"I couldn't add to it," he exclaimed, almost fiercely, "so I went to
Vernon."

"Why?"

"Sergius--to warn him."

There was a dead silence. Even the rain was hushed against the window.
Then Sergius said, in a voice that was cold as the sound of falling
water in winter:--

"I don't understand."

"Because you won't understand how I have learnt to know you, Sergius, to
understand you, to read your soul."

"Mine too?"

"Yes; I've felt this awful blow that's come upon you--the loss of Olga,
her ruin--as if I myself were you. We haven't said much about it till
yesterday. Then, from the way you spoke, from the way you looked, from
what you said, even what you wouldn't say, I guessed all that was in
your heart."

"You guessed all that?"

Sergius was looking directly at Anthony and leaning against the
mantelpiece, along which he stretched one arm. His fingers closed and
unclosed, with a mechanical and rhythmical movement, round a china
figure. The motion looked as if it were made in obedience to some
fiercely monotonous music.

"Yes, more--I knew it."

Sergius nodded.

"I see," he said.

Anthony touched his arm, almost with an awe-struck gesture.

"I knew then that you--that you intended to kill Vernon. And--God
forgive me!--at first I was almost glad."

"Well--go on!"

Anthony shivered. The voice of Sergius was so strangely calm and level.

"I--I--" he stammered. "Serge, why do you look at me like that?"

Sergius looked away without a word.

"For I, too, hated Vernon, more for what he had done to you even than
for what he had done to Olga. But, Sergius, after you had gone, in the
night, and in the dawn too, I kept on thinking of it over and over. I
couldn't get away from it--that you were going to commit such an awful
crime. I never slept. When at last it was morning, I went down to my
district; there are criminals there, you know."

"I know."

"I looked at them with new eyes, and in their eyes I saw you, always
you; and then I said to myself could I bear that you should become a
criminal?"

"You said that?"

The fingers of Sergius closed over the china figure, and did not
unclose.

"Yes. I almost resolved then to go to Vernon at once and to tell him
what I suspected--what I really knew."

The clock struck eleven. Anthony heard it; Sergius did not hear it.

"T