That was their affair he said.
"It was then that I realised Wilderling. He was standing quite close to
me. He had obviously been struggling a bit, because his shirt was all
torn, and you could see his chest. He kept moving his hand and trying to
pull his shirt over; it was his only movement. He was as straight as a
dart, and except for the motion of his hand as still as a statue,
standing between the soldiers, looking directly in front of him. He had
been mad in that other room, quite dotty.
"He was as sane as anything now, grave and serious and rather ironical,
just as he always looked. Well it was at that moment, when I saw him
there, that I thought of Vera. I had been thinking of her all the time
of course. I had been thinking of nothing else for weeks. But that
minute, there in the hall, settled me. Callous, wasn't it? I ought to
have been thinking only of Wilderling and his poor old wife. After all,
they'd been awfully good to me. She'd been almost like a mother all the
time.... But there it was. It came over me like a storm. I'd been
fighting for nights and days and days and nights not to go to
her--fighting like hell, trying to play the game the sentimentalists
would call it.
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