Outside, the drum throbbed distantly, like the beating of a great excited heart. The thin call of a trumpet sounded keenly like a sigh of pain. Nearer the tramp of men and horses could be heard. But all these things only made them feel more absolutely alone together--this man and this woman who had once been one in marriage! With his breast heaving quickly with deep, uneven breaths, he suddenly uttered her name in a thick whisper. Still she remained as she had been before, motionless and wordless, while he read her eyes. He dropped his stick, and seized her hands in both his own, which were cold and shaking. “Speak!” he said commandingly. “In God’s name, what do you mean, unless it is that you love me still?” Her hands were quiet and nerveless in his grasp, and in another instant he would have lost control and consciousness of what he was doing. But at this very moment the cabman called to his horse and cracked his whip, the carriage gave a lurch forward, and they rattled rapidly away. Recollecting himself, Harold dropped the hands which he had seized so recklessly, and touched the springs of the curtains, which instantly flew up, letting in the full light of day. The fresh air which came in seemed to calm his heated blood, and he was master of himself again. When he turned to look at his companion, she was leaning back in exactly the same position, only her heavy, richly fringed white lids were dropped over her eyes. In this way she remained quite still until the carriage stopped before the door of her apartment. Harold, who thought that she had now really fainted, was about to summon help from the concierge, when she opened her eyes with a look of entire self-possession in them, got out of the cab without the aid of his offered hand, and, bowing her thanks, without speaking walked past him into the house, with a look of cool dismissal which made it impossible for him to follow. Puzzled, confused, bewildered almost to the point of frenzy, he got back into the cab, and ordered the driver to drive in the Bois until he should tell him to turn. Sonia, during that same time, was shut within her room, thinking as intensely as he. She had been able, by dint of enormous will-power, to control herself in all other points while indulging herself in one. She had said to herself during those crucial minutes in the cab, while she consciously threw open the windows of her soul to this man in that clear and unrestricted gaze, that she would neither speak nor stir, though the effort should kill her. She found that she could best carry out this resolve by relaxing her body utterly, while her will got every moment tenser in its strain. She had said to herself over and over to what seemed a thousand times: “Don’t move--don’t speak. Don’t move--don’t speak”; and the very consciousness that she was equal to this effort made her the more free in the abandonment with which she had let him read her heart in her eyes.