But
she broke away and fled from him and disappeared in the dark and narrow
staircase. As he stood, he could hear her light tread on the creaking wood
of the steps, fainter and fainter in the distance. Then he caught the
feeble tinkle of a little bell, the opening and shutting of a door, and he
was alone in the gloom of the evening.
For some minutes he stood still, as though listening for some faint echo
from the direction in which Vjera had disappeared, then he slowly and
thoughtfully walked away. He had forgotten to eat at dinner-time, and now
he forgot that the hour of the second meal had come round. He walked on,
not knowing and not caring whither he went, absorbed in the contemplation
of the bright pictures which framed themselves in his brain, troubled only
by his ever-recurring wonder at Vjera's behaviour.
Unconsciously, and from sheer force of habit, he threaded the streets in
the direction of the tobacconist's shop where so much of his time was
spent. If it be not true that the ghosts of the dead haunt places familiar
to them in life, yet the superstition is founded upon the instincts of
human nature. Men begin to haunt certain spots unconsciously while they
are alive, especially those which they are obliged to visit every day and
in which they are accustomed to sit, idle or at work, during the greater
part of the week. The artist, when he wishes to be completely at rest,
re-enters the studio he left but an hour earlier; the sailor hangs about
the port when he is ashore, the shopman cannot resist the temptation to
spend an hour among his wares on Sunday, the farmer is irresistibly drawn
to the field to while away the time on holidays between dinner and supper.
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