"What a hole! What a beastly place! The floor is wet; ugh!--The walls are dank and shiny--things are crawling! Good heavens, something ran over my foot!--It must be a rat, scurrying--scampering! Sapristi! There's another! What a scrape to be in--what a scrape!"
The girl lifted her head and looked at him, straining her eyes for the outline of his shoulders, the mass of his dark curls. He had turned half away and was wringing his hands, feeling them and exclaiming to himself. She crept towards him and stretched out her hand, touching his shoulder.
He shuddered away from her: "You, is it you! Are you alive? I thought you were dead! Mon Dieu, I thought I was shut in with a corpse! It is frightful, horrible! I have suffered! God, how I have suffered--the torture of the damned!"
"My hands are cut; I know they are cut! Look, can you see,--are they covered with blood? I am sure I feel it trickling!--Look!"
"I tell you I feel it--and my shoulder, my arm--I shall never be able to play again! I am ruined--ruined--and for what? Why did you come to me? Why didn't you go to someone else--anybody?"
"Ah forgive me, forgive me." The girl crept closer and laid her hand on his shoulder, pathetically as if half afraid. "I shouldn't have gone to you, but--listen, Monsieur--let me tell you--let me explain! I thought there was no danger, not for you, otherwise--Oh, do believe me, not for the world would I have done it! I knew you were an artist; Bobo told us you were going to Germany--I thought--Can you ever forgive me?"
Her voice broke a little and she was silent.
Velasco went on rocking himself, feeling his arms, his hands, his fingers at intervals. "Don't talk," he said, "You make me nervous. You did very wrong; you ought never to have come to me. I hate anarchists; I never could bear them; and now they take me for one! I shall live here all my days--and my Stradivarius, my treasure--Heaven knows where they have put it--lying on the platform of the station, or perhaps broken, or stolen! I shall never see it again, never! Ah, it is cruel--it is not to be borne! Don't speak, I tell you, I can't bear it! You shouldn't have coaxed me!--Ugh! these rats--brr--did you feel it?"
The girl gave a muffled cry. She had shrunk away in the corner, but now she crouched forward, her eyes dilated, staring into the darkness.