Mother is in the next room.

Remember she may hear--she must hear." But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart.

He told Jean all his suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his assurance, and the history of the portrait--which had again disappeared.

He spoke in short broken sentences almost without coherence--the language of a sleep-walker.
He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the adjoining room.

He talked as if no one were listening, because he must talk, because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the wound too tightly.