For some reason I hesitated.
"He says so," I replied cautiously. "At any rate, he is much better."
"Yes, I can see that. But he is still in a very nervous condition."
"Ah," I said, "that is only--only at certain times."
As we went together from room to room I forgot everything except the
fact of her presence. Never was beauty so powerful as hers; never was
the power of beauty used so artlessly, with such a complete
unconsciousness. I began gloomily to speculate on the chances of her
ultimately marrying Alresca, and a remark from her awoke me from my
abstraction. We were nearing the top of the house.
"It is all familiar to me, in a way," she said.
"Why, you said the same down-stairs. Have you been here before?"
"Never, to my knowledge."
We were traversing a long, broad passage side by side. Suddenly I
tripped over an unexpected single stair, and nearly fell. Rosa,
however, had allowed for it.
"I didn't see that step," I said.
"Nor I," she answered, "but I knew, somehow, that it was there. It is
very strange and uncanny, and I shall insist on an explanation from
Alresca." She gave a forced laugh.
As I fumbled with the handle of the door she took hold of my hand.
"Listen!" she said excitedly, "this will be a small room, and over the
mantelpiece is a little round picture of a dog."
I opened the door with something akin to a thrill. This part of the
house was unfamiliar to me. The room was certainly a small one, but
there was no little round picture over the mantelpiece. It was a
square picture, and rather large, and a sea-piece.
"You guessed wrong," I said, and I felt thankful.
"No, no, I am sure."
She went to the square picture, and lifted it away from the wall.
"Look!" she said.
Behind the picture was a round whitish mark on the wall, showing where
another picture had previously hung.
"Let us go, let us go! I don't like the flicker of these candles," she
murmured, and she seized my arm.
We returned to the corridor. Her grip of me tightened.
"Was not that Alresca?" she cried.
"Where?"
"At the end of the corridor--there!"
"I saw no one, and it couldn't have been he, for the simple reason
that he can't walk yet, not to mention climbing three flights of
stairs. You have made yourself nervous."
We descended to the ground-floor. In the main hall Alresca's
housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a
curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I went on to the salon.
The aspect of the room is vividly before me now as I write. Most of
the great chamber was in a candle-lit gloom, but the reading-lamp
burnt clearly at the head of the couch, throwing into prominence the
fine profile of Alresca's face. He had fallen asleep, or at any rate
his eyes were closed. The copy of "Madame Bovary" lay on the floor,
and near it a gold pencil-case. Quietly I picked the book up, and saw
on the yellow cover of it some words written in pencil. These were the
words: "Carl, I love her. He has come again. This time it is ----"