“So terrible was my state, that I understood but slowly and gradually the dreadful realities that took place about me. One morning Adeline came into the room where I was teaching the boys, sat down, and listened. She drew from her finger a ring that had in it a great, lovely pearl, played with it thoughtfully, arose, went to the window to watch the falling of the snow, and then left the room to go into the garden. I could not breathe or see any longer. There was an intolerable pressure on my chest, and I had to leave the room for a little to catch my breath. When I returned I saw in the eyes of my pupils a look of unwonted malevolence. I paid no attention to it. From time to time the old rebelliousness flared up in them, but I let them be. They sat before me half-crouching, and recited their catechism softly and with glances full of fear. “About ten minutes passed when Adeline returned. She said she had left her ring on the table, and asked me whether I had seen it. She began to search for it, and so did I. She called her maid and a footman, who examined everything in the room; but the ring was gone. Adeline and her servants looked at me strangely, for I stood there and could not move. I felt at once and in every fibre that I was exposed to their suspicion. They searched on the stairs and in the hall, in the new fallen snow of the garden, and again in the room, since Adeline insisted that she had taken the ring off there and forgotten it on the table. And I confirmed this statement, although I had not actually seen the ring on the table, since I had seen her and her gestures but as things in a dream. All the words that were exchanged between her and the servants seemed directed against me. I read suspicion in their looks and changed colour, and called the boys, who had stolen away as soon as they could, and questioned them. They suggested that their rooms be searched, and looked at me with malignity. I begged Adeline to have my room searched as well. She made a deprecating gesture, but said, as though in self-justification, that she attached a peculiar value to this ring and should hate to lose it.