Before
she had switched on the light he realised it. With a click the light was
on. Markovitch had intended to open his door and go out to her, smiling.
He saw at once that she was waiting for some one.... He stood,
trembling, on tiptoe, his face pressed against the glass of the pane.
Lawrence came in. He had the face, Markovitch told me many weeks
afterwards, "of a triumphant man."
They had obviously met outside, because Vera said, as though continuing
a conversation:
"And it's only just happened?"
"I've come straight from there," Lawrence answered.
Then he went up to her. She let herself at once go to him and he half
carried her to a chair near the table and exactly opposite Markovitch's
window.
They kissed "like people who had been starving all their lives."
Markovitch was trembling so that he was afraid lest he should tumble or
make some noise. The two figures in the chair were like statues in their
immobile, relentless, unswerving embrace.
Suddenly he saw that Nina was standing in the opposite doorway "like a
ghost." She was there for so brief a moment that he could not be sure
that she had been there at all.
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