This devoted and tender message had been lost, however, on his instructor: Eugene’s face was set in a fixed glare of rage as he regarded his class. For a moment he was absolutely speechless.
“If anyone thinks,” he began at length in a voice that was small and choked with fury, “that I am here—” apparently someone did think so, for at this moment, slowly, craftily, the knob of the door began to move, slowly the door swung open as if propelled by a ghostly hand. He paused again, and this time murder sweltered in his heart and was legible upon his face. Softly with the tread of a cat he stepped toward the door, and paused as if getting ready to spring, while it opened: the class waited tensely with held breath. Then, as slowly as the door had opened, a face was thrust in through the opening: it was the face of one of the hall guards, the face of an old man, a face of unutterable melancholy and of the most dismal sourness: the old dull face with its dry sagging flesh and its small watery eyes turned slowly on its scrawny neck, surveying Eugene, the class, and the four walls of the room in a glance full of dislike and suspicion. Then slowly and craftily, as it had come, as if it had been thrust forward on a stick by some unseen hand, the face withdrew, and the door swung to silently once again.
For a moment Eugene stared at the closing door with an expression of stupefaction. Then suddenly a surge of humour, powerful, choking, explosive, and tongueless in its unutterable and wordless implication, welled up in his throat. He cast the book from him with a roar of laughter in which the class joined.
“Get out of here,” he shouted. “I’m through! That’s enough. Go away! Leave me alone!”
XLVIII
The Hotel Leopold, where he now lived, was situated on a short and grimy street about two blocks from the university, northward, in the direction of Union Square.
The Leopold, although one of the city’s smaller hotels, was not a single building, but a congeries of buildings which covered an entire block. The central and main building of the system was a structure of twelve storeys, of that anomalous stone and brick construction which seems to have enjoyed a vogue in the early nineteen hundreds. To the left was a building twenty or thirty years older, known as “the old annex.” It was eight storeys high, of old red brick, and the street floor was occupied by shops and a restaurant. To the right was a building of six storeys, which
