He longed to ask her whether she had actually called out his name aloud, or whether that psychic summoning had conveyed its message independently of either of their two conscious minds. But he was too troubled by this unusual look upon her face and this unnatural reserve, to ask any questions. He longed to enquire how the old man had come to have such an accident at all; but he dared not refer to it. There emanated from the girl an ice-cold barrier of inflexible pride, setting him at such a distance that no real exchange of feelings was possible.

Every now and then she would get up and move the bedclothes under the old man’s chin, as if fearful lest he should be suffocated. But the particular way she did this struck Wolf as having something unnatural in it, for she did it exactly as if the old man were already dead. She touched him differently from the way she would have done it had he merely been unconscious. Her attitude seemed to display the shrinking abhorrence that living people experience at contact with inanimate flesh.