For ten full seconds she looked him in the eyes in silence with a firm relentless gaze, and suddenly whispered rapidly: "I shall never forgive you for this!" When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovitch, after closing the doors, told me this melancholy tale in a whisper, he vowed that he had been so petrified on the spot that he had not seen or heard how Varvara Petrovna had disappeared.

As she never once afterwards alluded to the incident and everything went on as though nothing had happened, he was all his life inclined to the idea that it was all an hallucination, a symptom of illness, the more so as he was actually taken ill that very night and was indisposed for a fortnight, which, by the way, cut short the interviews in the arbour.
But in spite of his vague theory of hallucination he seemed every day, all his life, to be expecting the continuation, and, so to say, the _denouement_ of this affair.

He could not believe that that was the end of it! And if so he must have looked strangely sometimes at his friend.
V She had herself designed the costume for him which he wore for the rest of his life.

It was elegant and characteristic; a long black frock-coat, buttoned almost to the top, but stylishly cut; a soft hat (in summer a straw hat) with a wide brim, a white batiste cravat with a full bow and hanging ends, a cane with a silver knob; his hair flowed on to his shoulders.

It was dark brown, and only lately had begun to get a little grey.