Well, it had come down on him now.  A more pitiful object Vera had never seen.  He was dressed in a dirty black suit and wore a shabby fur cap, his padded overcoat was torn.

But the overwhelming effect of him was terror.  Vera had never before seen such terror, and at once, as though the thing were an infectious disease, her own heart began to beat furiously.  He was shaking so that the fur cap, which was too large for his head, waggled up and down over his eye in a ludicrous manner.

His face was dirty as though he had been crying, and a horrid pallid grey in colour.

His collar was torn, showing his neck between the folds of his overcoat.

Vera looked out down the stairs as though she expected to see something.  The flat was perfectly still.  There was not a sound anywhere.  She turned back to the man again, he was crouching against the wall.

“You can’t come in here,” she repeated.  “My sister and I are alone.  What do you want?...  What’s the matter?”

“Shut the door!...  Shut the door!...  Shut the door!...” he repeated.

She closed it.  “Now what is it?” she asked, and then, hearing a sound, turned to find that Nina was standing with wide eyes, watching.

“What is it?” Nina asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” said Vera, also whispering.  “He won’t tell me.”

He pushed past them then into the dining-room, looked about him for a moment, then sank into a chair as though his legs would no longer support him, holding on to the cloth with both hands.

The sisters followed him into the dining-room.

“Don’t shiver like that!” said Vera, “tell us why you’ve come in here?"...

His eyes looked past them, never still, wandering from wall to wall, from door to door.

“They’re after me...” he said.  “That’s it—­I was hiding in our cupboard all last night and this morning.  They were round there all the time breaking up our things....  I heard them shouting.  They were going to kill me.  I’ve done nothing—­O God! what’s that?”

“There’s no one here,” said Vera, “except ourselves.”

“I saw a chance to get away and I crept out.  But I couldn’t get far....  I knew you would be good-hearted... good-hearted.  Hide me somewhere—­anywhere!... and they won’t come in here.  Only until the evening.  I’ve done no one any harm....  Only my duty....”

He began to snivel, taking out from his coat a very dirty pocket-handkerchief and dabbing his face with it.

The odd thing that they felt, as they looked at him, was the incredible intermingling of public and private affairs.  Five minutes before they had been passing through a tremendous crisis in their personal relationship.  The whole history of their lives together, flowing through how many years, through how many phases, how many quarrels, and happiness and adventures had reached here a climax whose issue was so important that life between them could never be the same again.