Her attitude
increased his disturbance.
II
When George rang the bell at No. 8 Alexandra Grove his mysterious qualms
were intensified. He dreaded the moment when the door should open, even
though it should be opened by Marguerite herself. And yet he had a
tremendous desire to see Marguerite--merely to look at her face, to
examine it, to read it. His summons was not answered. He glanced about.
The steps were dirty. The brass knob and the letter-flap had not been
polished. After a time he pushed up the flap and gazed within, and saw
the interior which he knew so well and which he had not entered for so
many months. Nothing was changed in it, but it also had a dusty and
neglected air. Every detail roused his memory. The door of what had once
been his room was shut; he wondered what the room was now. This house
held the greatest part of his history. It lived in his mind as vitally
as even the boarding-house kept by his mother in a side-street in
Brighton, romantic and miserable scene of his sensitive childhood. It
was a solemn house for him. Through the basement window on a dark night
he had first glimpsed Marguerite. Unforgettable event! Unlike anything
else that had ever happened to anybody!... He heard a creak, and caught
sight through the letter-aperture of a pair of red slippers, and then
the lower half of a pair of trousers, descending the stairs.
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