It
creaks more like a human being than anything you ever heard, and
to-night I could have sworn Semyonov got up out of it. It was just like
his heavy slow movement. However, there wasn't any one there. Do you
think all this silly?" he asked.
"No, indeed I don't," I answered.
"Then there's a picture. You know that awful painting of a mid-Victorian
ancestor of Vera's--a horrible old man with bushy eyebrows and a high,
rather dirty-looking stock?"
"Yes, I know it," I said.
"It's one of those pictures with eyes that follow you all round the
room. At least it has now. I usen't to notice them. Now they stare at
you as though they'd eat you, and I know that Markovitch feels them
because he keeps looking up at the beastly thing. Then there's--But no,
I'm not going to talk any more about it. It isn't any good. One gets
thinking of anything these days. One's nerves are all on edge. And that
flat's too full of people any way."
"Yes, it is," I agreed.
We arrived at Rozanov's house, and went up in a very elegant
heavily-gilt lift. Once in the flat we were enveloped in a cloud of men
and women, tobacco smoke, and so many pictures that it was like tumbling
into an art-dealer's.
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