Still, now and again, her eye, which was counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock.

And the doctor, who was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five steps, met his mother's look at each turn.
It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness, intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart.

He was saying to himself--at once tortured and glad: "She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And each time he reached the fire-place he stopped for a few seconds to look at Marechal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was haunted by a fixed idea.

So that this little portrait, smaller than an opened palm, was like a living being, malignant and threatening, suddenly brought into this house and this family.
Presently the street-door bell rang.Mme.Roland, always so self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the anguish of her nerves.

Then she said: "It must be Mme.