“But with the appearance of the girl he became obviously alarmed.  It was plain.  I could see it grow.  The change of his expression was swift and startling.  And I did not know why.  The reason never occurred to me.  I was merely astonished at the extreme alteration of the man’s face.  Of course he had not been aware of her presence in the other cellar; but that did not explain the shock her advent had given him.  For a moment he seemed to have been reduced to imbecility.  He opened his mouth as if to shout, or perhaps only to gasp.  At any rate, it was somebody else who shouted.  This somebody else was the heroic comrade whom I had detected swallowing a piece of paper.  With laudable presence of mind he let out a warning yell.

“‘It’s the police!  Back!  Back!  Run back, and bolt the door behind you.’

“It was an excellent hint; but instead of retreating the girl continued to advance, followed by her long-faced brother in his knickerbocker suit, in which he had been singing comic songs for the entertainment of a joyless proletariat.  She advanced not as if she had failed to understand—­the word ‘police’ has an unmistakable sound—­but rather as if she could not help herself.  She did not advance with the free gait and expanding presence of a distinguished amateur anarchist amongst poor, struggling professionals, but with slightly raised shoulders, and her elbows pressed close to her body, as if trying to shrink within herself.  Her eyes were fixed immovably upon Sevrin.  Sevrin the man, I fancy; not Sevrin the anarchist.  But she advanced.  And that was natural.  For all their assumption of independence, girls of that class are used to the feeling of being specially protected, as, in fact, they are.  This feeling accounts for nine tenths of their audacious gestures.  Her face had gone completely colourless.  Ghastly.  Fancy having it brought home to her so brutally that she was the sort of person who must run away from the police!  I believe she was pale with indignation, mostly, though there was, of course, also the concern for her intact personality, a vague dread of some sort of rudeness.  And, naturally, she turned to a man, to the man on whom she had a claim of fascination and homage—­the man who could not conceivably fail her at any juncture.”

“But,” I cried, amazed at this analysis, “if it had been serious, real, I mean—­as she thought it was—­what could she expect him to do for her?”

X never moved a muscle of his face.

“Goodness knows.  I imagine that this charming, generous, and independent creature had never known in her life a single genuine thought; I mean a single thought detached from small human vanities, or whose source was not in some conventional perception.  All I know is that after advancing a few steps she extended her hand towards the motionless Sevrin.  And that at least was no gesture.  It was a natural movement.  As to what she expected him to do, who can tell?  The impossible.  But whatever she expected, it could not have come up, I am safe to say, to what he had made up his mind to do, even before that entreating hand had appealed to him so directly.  It had not been necessary.  From the moment he had seen her enter that cellar, he had made up his mind to sacrifice his future usefulness, to throw off the impenetrable, solidly fastened mask it had been his pride to wear—­”