"The room in which I stood was dimly lighted, but I could see that,
like the hall, it was hung with heavy, Persian rugs. The corners were
filled with palms, and there was the unmistakable odor in the air of
Russian cigarettes, and strange, dry scents that carried me back to
the bazaars of Vladivostock. Near the front windows was a grand
piano, and at the other end of the room a heavily carved screen of
some black wood, picked out with ivory. The screen was overhung with
a canopy of silken draperies, and formed a sort of alcove. In front
of the alcove was spread the white skin of a polar bear, and set on
that was one of those low, Turkish coffee-tables. It held a lighted
spirit-lamp and two gold coffee-cups. I had heard no movement from
above stairs, and it must have been fully three minutes that I stood
waiting, noting these details of the room and wondering at the delay,
and at the strange silence.

"And then, suddenly, as my eye grew more used to the half-light, I
saw, projecting from behind the screen, as though it were stretched
along the back of a divan, the hand of a man and the lower part of
his arm. I was as startled as though I had come across a footprint on
a deserted island. Evidently, the man had been sitting there since I
had come into the room, even since I had entered the house, and he
had heard the servant knocking upon the door. Why he had not declared
himself I could not understand, but I supposed that, possibly, he was
a guest, with no reason to interest himself in the Princess's other
visitors, or, perhaps, for some reason, he did not wish to be
observed. I could see nothing of him except his hand, but I had an
unpleasant feeling that he had been peering at me through the carving
in the screen, and that he still was doing so. I moved my feet
noisily on the floor and said, tentatively, 'I beg your pardon.'