There was a dead silence:  a silence that from matter-of-fact suddenly became unendurable.

Queed handed the envelope to Nicolovius.  Nicolovius glanced at it, while pretending not to, and his eyelash flickered; his face was about the color of cigar ashes.  Queed walked away, waiting.

He expected that the old man would immediately demand whether he had seen that name and address, or at least would immediately say something.  But he did nothing of the sort.  When Queed turned at the end of the room, Nicolovius was fluttering the pages of his book again, apparently absorbed in it, apparently quite forgetting that he had just laid it aside.  Then Queed understood.  Nicolovius did not mean to say or do anything.  He meant to pass over the little incident altogether.

However, the pretense had now reached a point when Queed could no longer endure it.

“Perhaps, after all,” said Nicolovius, in his studiously bland voice, “I am a little sweeping—­”

Queed stood in front of him, interrupting, suddenly not at ease.  “Professor Nicolovius.”

“Yes?”

“I must say something that will offend you, I’m afraid.  For some time I have found myself unable to believe the—­story of your life you were once good enough to give me.”

“Ah, well,” said Nicolovius, engrossed in his book, “it is not required of you to believe it.  We need have no quarrel about that.”

Suddenly Queed found that he hated to give the stab, but he did not falter.

“I must be frank with you, professor.  I saw whom that envelope was addressed to just now.”

“Nor need we quarrel about that.”

But Queed’s steady gaze upon him presently grew unbearable, and at last the old man raised his head.

“Well?  Whom was it addressed to?”

Queed felt disturbingly sorry for him, and, in the same thought, admired his iron control.  The old professor’s face was gray; his very lips were colorless; but his eyes were steady, and his voice was the voice of every day.

“I think,” said Queed, quietly, “that it is addressed to you.”

There was a lengthening silence while the two men, motionless, looked into each other’s eyes.  The level gaze of each held just the same look of faint horror, horror subdued and controlled, but still there.  Their stare became fascinated; it ran on as though nothing could ever happen to break it off.  To Queed it seemed as if everything in the world had dropped away but those brilliant eyes, frightened yet unafraid, boring into his.

Nicolovius broke the silence.  The triumph of his intelligence over his emotions showed in the fact that he attempted no denial.

“Well?” he said somewhat thickly.  “Well?—­Well?”

Under the look of the younger man, he was beginning to break.  Into the old eyes had sprung a deadly terror, a look as though his immortal soul might hang on what the young man was going to say next.  To answer this look, a blind impulse in Queed bade him strike out, to say or do something; and his reason, which was always detached and impersonal, was amazed to hear his voice saying:—­