Ordynov tried to interrupt her, but, with hands clasped, she besought him, by his love for her, not to do so. Then, under the spell of an ever-growing excitement, she began the following recital. It was an inconsequential story, the devious wanderings of a storm-ridden soul; yet to Ordynov it seemed intelligible for the reason that her life and troubles were so closely intertwined with his. In every word that she uttered he could detect and recognise his own old enemy—the old man who had figured in his childish dreams, but who was now hectoring it, rather, over the soul of this poor young unsophisticated girl, and profaning it with infinite wickedness.

“It was on such a night as this,” she began. “Yet, if anything, it was even wilder, and the wind was howling through our forest as I had never heard it howl before. (Or did it seem to me to do so only because that night was to prove the night of my undoing?) Just under our windows it shattered a splendid oak-tree of which I had heard an old beggar say that, even in his boyhood, it had looked as tall and beautiful as it did then. . . . On the night in question (I can remember it as clearly as though it were yesterday) my father’s boats were wrecked on the river; and ill though he was, the fishermen had no sooner come to tell him the news than he went out to the factory, to ascertain for himself the extent of the damage. Thus we were left alone in the house, my mother and I. I was asleep, and she was weeping bitterly. Ah, I know now why she was weeping so bitterly! . . . She had been ill, and was as white as a sheet when she awoke me to tell me to prepare her shroud. . . . Suddenly we heard a rapping at the door. I sprang up in bed, and my mother uttered a cry. With a timid glance at her I took the lantern, and went out to open the door of the yard. . . . It was he! . . . As soon as ever I saw him my fears redoubled, for always—as long as I can remember—I had been afraid of him. In those days his hair was not yet white, his beard was as black as coal, and his eyes were like two glowing cinders. On more than one previous occasion they had looked at me with approval.

“ ‘Is your mother at home?’ he asked.

“ ‘My father is not at home,’ I replied as I closed the wicket behind him.

“ ‘I know that.’

“Suddenly I saw him turn and look at me—look at me, oh, so strangely! It was the first time that he had so looked at me. I moved away towards the house, but he remained standing where he was.

“ ‘Why do you not come in?’ I said to him.