The man's stride checked, his smile faded, his eyes grew wide and cloudy
with bewilderment. For a moment Sofia thought him on the point of bowing,
as one might on unexpectedly encountering an acquaintance after many years:
there was that hint of impulse hindered by uncertainty. And in that moment
the girl was conscious of a singular sensation of breathlessness, as if
something impended whose issue might change all the courses of her life. A
feeling quite insane and unaccountable, to be sure; and nothing came of it
whatever. With a readiness so instant that the break in his walk must have
been imperceptible to anybody but Sofia, the man recollected himself,
composed his face, and proceeded to the door.

Confounded with inexplicable disappointment, Sofia sat unstirring.

In the open doorway the man turned and looked back, not at her, but at
Karslake, as if of half a mind to return and say something more to the
younger man. But he didn't.

He never came back.



III

THE AGONY COLUMN


Sofia dated from that afternoon the first stirrings of a discontent which
grew in her throughout the summer till everything related to her lot seemed
abominable in her sight.