"I will begin," she said, "at the point where I left off reading." She
took up a portion of the manuscript, she brought her chair within a yard
of the grating, she sat down with her face toward me, and she read.
Sometimes she stopped and spoke of what she was reading, now to ask a
question, and now to tell something she had seen in the place I
described. I said but little. I did not wish to occupy any of that
lovely morning with my words,--words which were bound to mean nothing.
As she read and talked, some color came into her face; she looked more
like herself. What a shame to shut up such a woman in a House where she
never had anything interesting to talk about, never anybody interested
to talk to!
After the reading of half a dozen pages during which she had not
interrupted herself, she laid the manuscript in her lap, and asked me
the time. I told her it wanted twenty minutes of twelve. She made no
answer, but rose, put the manuscript in the drawer, and then returned
with a little note which she had taken from her pocket.
"Mother Anastasia desired me to give you this," she said, folding it so
that she could push it through one of the interstices of the grating;
"she told me to hand it to you as I was coming away, but I don't think
she would object to your reading it a little before that.
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