"Slowly and timidly, like an intruder, I crept along the garden railings towards the manor house, that seemed to look down upon me grimly and forbiddingly, with its granite pillars and its weather-beaten turrets and gables. Here and there the stucco had crumbled away, and the blackish bricks of the wall appeared beneath it. It looked as if time, like a long illness, had covered this venerable body with scars. The front door stood ajar. A large dark hall opened before me, from which a peculiar odour of fresh chalk and damp fungi streamed towards me--through small coloured glass windows, placed like glowing nests close under the ceiling and all covered with cobwebs, a dim twilight penetrated this space, hardly sufficient to bring into light the immense cupboards ranged along the walls. A brighter gleam fell upon a broad flight of stairs worn hollow, the steps of which rested upon stone pilasters. High vaulted oaken doors led to the inner apartments, but I did not venture to approach one of them. They seemed to me like prison gates. I was still standing there, timidly trying to find my way, when the front door was torn open and through the wide aperture two great yellow-spotted hounds rushed upon me. "I uttered a cry. The monsters jumped up at me, snuffed at my clothes, and then raced back to the door, barking and yelling. "'Who is there?' cried a voice, whose deep-sounding modulations I had so often fancied I heard in waking and dreaming. The aperture was darkened. There he stood. "Red mists seemed to roll before my eyes. I felt as if my feet were rooted to the ground. Breathing heavily, I leant against the stair column. "'Who the deuce is there?' he cried once more, while he vainly tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes. "I gathered up all my defiance. Calmly and proudly, as I had bid him farewell years before, would I meet him again to-day. What need for him to know how much I had suffered since then! "'Olga--really--Olga--is it you?' The suppressed delight that penetrated through his words gave me a warm thrill of pleasure. I felt for a moment as if I must throw myself upon his breast and weep out my heart there, but I kept my composure. "'Were you not expecting me?' I asked, mechanically stretching out my hand to him. "Oh, yes--of course--we have been expecting you every hour for the last two days--that is, we began to think----" "He had clasped my hand in both his, and was trying to look into my face. A peculiar mixture of cordiality and awkwardness lay in his manner. It seemed as if he were vainly trying to discover traces of his former good friend in me. "'How is Martha?' I asked. "'You will see for yourself.' he replied. 'I do not understand these things. To me she appears so weak and so fragile that I tell myself it will be a miracle if she survives it. But the doctor says she is getting on well, and I suppose he must know best.' "'And the child?' I asked further.