She folded the offprint over twice—rather awkwardly, since it was more than twenty pages long—and slipped it into one of her pockets. No, no one would ever notice; it was absurd even to hesitate.

Following this, however, Marya began to behave oddly. Or so it seemed to her in retrospect.

She wanted to leave and return to her room, to her work; yet she found herself prowling about the house, checking windows she knew were locked, checking the rear door a second time, even turning the handle doorknob of Fein’s study on the ground floor . . . and pressing her ear to the door. What did she hear, what could she expect to hear, except the agitated murmur of her own blood? . . . a dull distant heartbeat.

The thought that no one was in the house except Marya ran through her head, struck her as a new discovery. The thought that she was free, unobserved, a kind of bride. . . . She had a future awaiting her, Fein had casually prophesized, if she was equal to its rigors.

She examined the contents of a singularly messy closet, breathed in a rather agreeable odor of wool, boots, damp, tobacco, dust, dirt. She believed she could detect his smell. . . . She found herself on the stairs (but she did not want to go upstairs, she was disapproving, mildly incredulous), innocent and reckless as an overgrown child. Even the cats had caught on to this alteration of mood—Cagliostro ran past her, pretending to be frightened, his plume of a tail bristling.

She poked her head into the bathroom at the top of the stairs, ventured inside. Why not? Who could prevent her? A fly was buzzing at the window, feebly. The shower curtain over the tub was new, bright yellow-and-black striped plastic, but the rest of the room was old, shabby, badly in need of renovation. An outsized tub, rust-stained; a shower nozzle flecked with rust; a stained sink and toilet bowl; worn linoleum tile, once black. In the medicine cabinet mirror Marya’s face looked flushed but she did not care to examine it too closely. And what was inside the cabinet? . . . nothing very interesting apart from six or seven bottles of prescription pills, two for “Dr. Fein” and the rest for “Mrs. E. Fein.” But Marya reasoned that anything crucial to their well-being would have been taken along with them to Europe.

She left, she hurried along the corridor. A linen closet . . . another clothes closet . . . a former child’s room, now used (evidently) for storage . . . and now the master bedroom itself: furnished with a surprising formality, and rather somber, shadowy: with wine-dark velvet draperies at the windows, and wallpaper in an austere fleur-de-lis pattern, and a brass chandelier, and a high old-fashioned bed covered in an elegant white crocheted quilt.