indistinct, inward growl. He wanted to know my name.... On hearing it he
again showed signs of surprise. Then he asked me if I had been living
long in that town, and with whom? I answered him that I lived with my
mother.

"And your father?"

"My father died long ago."

He inquired my mother's Christian name, and immediately burst into an
awkward laugh--and then excused himself, saying that he had that
American habit, and that altogether he was a good deal of an eccentric.
Then he asked where we lived. I told him.




VI


The agitation which had seized upon me at the beginning of our
conversation had gradually subsided; I thought our intimacy rather
strange--that was all. I did not like the smile with which the baron
questioned me; neither did I like the expression of his eyes when he
fairly stabbed them into me.... There was about them something rapacious
and condescending ... something which inspired dread. I had not seen
those eyes in my dream. The baron had a strange face! It was pallid,
fatigued, and, at the same time, youthful in appearance, but with a
disagreeable youthfulness! Neither had my "nocturnal" father that deep
scar, which intersected his whole forehead in a slanting direction, and