Deep
down, as Miss Erme would have said, I was uneasy, I was expectant.
At the core of my disconcerted state--for my wonted curiosity lived
in its ashes--was the sharpness of a sense that Corvick would at
last probably come out somewhere. He made, in defence of his
credulity, a great point of the fact that from of old, in his study
of this genius, he had caught whiffs and hints of he didn't know
what, faint wandering notes of a hidden music. That was just the
rarity, that was the charm: it fitted so perfectly into what I
reported.
If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Chelsea I
dare say it was as much for news of Vereker as for news of Miss
Erme's ailing parent. The hours spent there by Corvick were
present to my fancy as those of a chessplayer bent with a silent
scowl, all the lamplit winter, over his board and his moves. As my
imagination filled it out the picture held me fast. On the other
side of the table was a ghostlier form, the faint figure of an
antagonist good-humouredly but a little wearily secure--an
antagonist who leaned back in his chair with his hands in his
pockets and a smile on his fine clear face. Close to Corvick,
behind him, was a girl who had begun to strike me as pale and
wasted and even, on more familiar view, as rather handsome, and who
rested on his shoulder and hung on his moves.
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