‘Why, that we met to-day.’
‘Oh, she!’ said Litvinov, with feigned indifference, and again he felt disgust and shame. ‘No!’ he thought, ‘to go on like this is impossible.’
He was sitting by his betrothed, while a fewinches from her in his side pocket, was Irina’s handkerchief.
Kapitolina Markovna went for a minute into the other room.
‘Tanya ...’ said Litvinov, with an effort. It was the first time that day he had called her by that name.
She turned towards him.
‘I ... I have something very important to say to you.’
‘Oh! really? when? directly?’
‘No, to-morrow.’
‘Oh! to-morrow. Very well.’
Litvinov’s soul was suddenly filled with boundless pity. He took Tatyana’s hand and kissed it humbly, like a sinner; her heart throbbed faintly and she felt no happiness.
In the night, at two o’clock, Kapitolina Markovna, who was sleeping in the same room with her niece, suddenly lifted up her head and listened.
‘Tanya,’ she said, ‘you are crying?’
Tatyana did not at once answer.
‘No, aunt,’ sounded her gentle voice, ‘I’ve caught a cold.’
‘Why did I say that to her?’ Litvinov thought the next morning as he sat in his room at the window. He shrugged his shoulders in vexation: he had said that to Tatyana simply to cut himself off all way of retreat. In the window lay a note from Irina: she asked him to see her at twelve. Potugin’s words incessantly recurred to his mind, they seemed to reach him with a faint ill-omened sound as of a rumbling underground. He was angry with himself, but could not get rid of them anyhow. Some one knocked at the door.
‘Wer da?’ asked Litvinov.
‘Ah! you’re at home! open!’ he heard Bindasov’s hoarse bass.
The door handle creaked.
Litvinov turned white with exasperation.
‘I’m not at home,’ he declared sharply.
‘Not at home? That’s a good joke!’
‘I tell you—not at home, get along.’
‘That’s civil! And I came to ask you for a little loan,’ grumbled Bindasov.
He walked off, however, tramping on his heels as usual.
Litvinov was all but dashing out after him, he felt such a longing to throttle the hateful ruffian. The events of the last few days had unstrung his nerves; a little more, and he would have burst into tears. He drank off a glass of cold water, locked up all the drawers in the furniture, he could not have said why, and went to Tatyana’s.
He found her alone. Kapitolina Markovna had gone out shopping. Tatyana was sitting on the sofa, holding a book in both hands. She was not reading it, and scarcely knew what book it was. She did not stir, but her heart was beating quickly in her bosom, and the little white collar round her neck quivered visibly and evenly.
Litvinov was confused.... However, he sat down by her, said good-morning, smiled at her; she too smiled at him without speaking. She had bowed to him when he came in, bowed courteously, not affectionately, and she did not glance at him. He held out his hand to her; she gave him her chill fingers, but at once freed them again, and took up the book. Litvinov felt that to begin the conversation with unimportantsubjects would be insulting Tatyana; she after her custom made no demands, but everything in her said plainly, ‘I am waiting, I am waiting.’... He must fulfil his promise. But though almost the whole night he had thought of nothing else, he had not prepared even the first introductory words, and absolutely did not know in what way to break this cruel silence.
‘Tanya,’ he began at last, ‘I told you yesterday that I have something important to say to you. I am ready, only I beg you beforehand not to be angry against me, and to rest assured that my feelings for you....’
He stopped. He caught his breath. Tatyana still did not stir, and did not look at him; she only clutched the book tighter than ever.
‘There has always been,’ Litvinov went on, without finishing the sentence he had begun, ‘there has always been perfect openness between us; I respect you too much to be a hypocrite with you; I want to prove to you that I know how to value the nobleness and independence of your nature, even though ... though of course....’
‘Grigory Mihalitch,’ began Tatyana in a measured voice while a deathly pallor overspread her whole face, ‘I will come to yourassistance, you no longer love me, and you don’t know how to tell me so.’
Litvinov involuntarily shuddered.
‘Why?’ ... he said, hardly intelligibly, ‘why could you suppose?... I really don’t understand....’
‘What! isn’t it the truth? Isn’t it the truth?—tell me, tell me.’
Tatyana turned quite round to Litvinov; her face, with her hair brushed back from it, approached his face, and her eyes, which for so long had not looked at him, seemed to penetrate into his eyes.
‘Isn’t it the truth?’ she repeated.
He said nothing, did not utter a single sound. He could not have lied at that instant, even if he had known she would believe him, and that his lie would save her; he was not even able to bear her eyes upon him. Litvinov said nothing, but she needed no answer, she read the answer in his very silence, in those guilty downcast eyes—and she turned away again and dropped the book.... She had been still uncertain till that instant, and Litvinov understood that; he understood that she had been still uncertain—and how hideous, actually hideous was all that he was doing.
He flung himself on his knees before her.
‘Tanya,’ he cried, ‘if only you knew howhard it is for me to see you in this position, how awful to me to think that it’s I ... I! My heart is torn to pieces, I don’t know myself, I have lost myself, and you, and everything.... Everything is shattered, Tanya, everything! Could I dream that I ... I should bring such a blow upon you, my best friend, my guardian angel?... Could I dream that we should meet like this, should spend such a day as yesterday!...’
Tatyana was trying to get up and go away. He held her back by the border of her dress.
‘No, listen to me a minute longer. You see I am on my knees before you, but I have not come to beg your forgiveness; you cannot, you ought not to forgive me. I have come to tell you that your friend is ruined, that he is falling into the pit, and would not drag you down with him.... But save me ... no! even you cannot save me. I should push you away, I am ruined, Tanya, I am ruined past all help.’
Tatyana looked at Litvinov.
‘You are ruined?’ she said, as though not fully understanding him. ‘You are ruined?’
‘Yes, Tanya, I am ruined. All the past, all that was precious, everything I have lived for up till now, is ruined for me; everything is wretched, everything is shattered, and I don’t know what awaits me in the future. You saidjust now that I no longer loved you.... No, Tanya, I have not ceased to love you, but a different, terrible, irresistible passion has come upon me, has overborne me. I fought against it while I could....’
Tatyana got up, her brows twitched, her pale face darkened. Litvinov too rose to his feet.
‘You love another woman,’ she began, ‘and I guess who she is.... We met her yesterday, didn’t we?... Well, I see what is left for me to do now. Since you say yourself this passion is unalterable’ ... (Tatyana paused an instant, possibly she had still hoped Litvinov would not let this last word pass unchallenged, but he said nothing), ‘it only remains for me to give you back ... your word.’
Litvinov bent his head, as though submissively receiving a well-deserved blow.
‘You have every right to be angry with me,’ he said. ‘You have every right to reproach me for feebleness ... for deceit.’
Tatyana looked at him again.
‘I have not reproached you, Litvinov, I don’t blame you. I agree with you: the bitterest truth is better than what went on yesterday. What sort of a life could ours have been now!’
‘What sort of a life will mine be now!’ echoed mournfully in Litvinov’s soul.
Tatyana went towards the door of the bedroom.
‘I will ask you to leave me alone for a little time, Grigory Mihalitch—we will see each other again, we will talk again. All this has been so unexpected I want to collect myself a little ... leave me alone ... spare my pride. We shall see each other again.’
And uttering these words, Tatyana hurriedly withdrew and locked the door after her.
Litvinov went out into the street like a man dazed and stunned; in the very depths of his heart something dark and bitter lay hid, such a sensation must a man feel who has murdered another; and at the same time he felt easier as though he had at last flung off a hated load. Tatyana’s magnanimity had crushed him, he felt vividly all that he had lost ... and yet? with his regret was mingled irritation; he yearned towards Irina as to the sole refuge left him, and felt bitter against her. For some time Litvinov’s feelings had been every day growing more violent and more complex; this complexity tortured him, exasperated him, he was lost in this chaos. He thirsted for one thing; to get out at last on to the path, whatever it might be, if only not to wander longer in this incomprehensible half-darkness. Practical people of Litvinov’s sort ought never to becarried away by passion, it destroys the very meaning of their lives.... But nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic; she has her own, which we do not recognise and do not acknowledge till we are crushed under its wheel.
On parting from Tatyana, Litvinov held one thought in his mind, to see Irina; he set off indeed to see her. But the general was at home, so at least the porter told him, and he did not care to go in, he did not feel himself capable of hypocrisy, and he moved slowly off towards the Konversation Hall. Litvinov’s incapacity for hypocrisy was evident that day to both Voroshilov and Pishtchalkin, who happened to meet him; he simply blurted out to the former that he was empty as a drum; to the latter that he bored every one to extinction; it was lucky indeed that Bindasov did come across him; there would certainly have been a ‘grosser Scandal.’ Both the young men were stupefied; Voroshilov went so far as to ask himself whether his honour as an officer did not demand satisfaction? But like Gogol’s lieutenant, Pirogov, he calmed himself with bread and butter in a café. Litvinov caught sight in the distance of Kapitolina Markovna running busily from shop to shop in her striped mantle.... He felt ashamed to face the good, absurd, generous old lady. Then he recalledPotugin, their conversation yesterday.... Then something was wafted to him, something intangible and unmistakable: if a falling shadow shed a fragrance, it could not be more elusive, but he felt at once that it was Irina near him, and in fact she appeared a few paces from him, arm-in-arm with another lady; their eyes met at once. Irina probably noticed something peculiar in the expression of Litvinov’s face; she stopped before a shop, in which a number of tiny wooden clocks of Black Forest make were exhibited, and summoning him by a motion of her head, she pointed to one of these clocks, and calling upon him to admire a charming clock-face with a painted cuckoo above it, she said, not in a whisper, but as though finishing a phrase begun, in her ordinary tone of voice, much less likely to attract the attention of outsiders, ‘Come in an hour’s time, I shall be alone.’
But at this moment the renowned lady-killer Monsieur Verdier swooped down upon her, and began to fall into ecstasies over the colour,feuille morte, of her gown and the low-crowned Spanish hat she wore tilted almost down to her eyebrows.... Litvinov vanished in the crowd.
‘Grigory,’ Irina was saying to him two hours later, as she sat beside him on the sofa, and laid both hands on his shoulder, ‘what is the matter with you? Tell me now quickly, while we’re alone.’
‘The matter with me?’ said Litvinov. ‘I am happy, happy, that’s what’s the matter with me.’
Irina looked down, smiled, sighed.
‘That’s not an answer to my question, my dear one.’
Litvinov grew thoughtful.
‘Well, let me tell you then ... since you insist positively on it’ (Irina opened her eyes wide and trembled slightly), ‘I have told everything to-day to my betrothed.’
‘What, everything? You mentioned me?’
Litvinov fairly threw up his arms.
‘Irina, for God’s sake, how could such an idea enter your head! that I——’
‘There, forgive me ... forgive me. What did you say?’
‘I told her that I no longer loved her.’
‘She asked why?’
‘I did not disguise the fact that I loved another woman, and that we must part.’
‘Ah ... and what did she do? Agreed?’
‘O Irina! what a girl she is! She was all self-sacrifice, all generosity!’
‘I’ve no doubt, I’ve no doubt ... there was nothing else for her to do, though.’
‘And not one reproach, not one hard word to me, who have spoiled her whole life, deceived her, pitilessly flung her over....’
Irina scrutinised her finger nails.
‘Tell me, Grigory ... did she love you?’
‘Yes, Irina, she loved me.’
Irina was silent a minute, she straightened her dress.
‘I must confess,’ she began, ‘I don’t quite understand what induced you to explain matters to her.’
‘What induced me, Irina! Would you have liked me to lie, to be a hypocrite to her, that pure soul? or did you suppose——’
‘I supposed nothing,’ Irina interrupted. ‘I must admit I have thought very little about her. I don’t know how to think of two people at once.’
‘That is, you mean——’
‘Well, and so what then? Is she goingaway, that pure soul?’ Irina interrupted a second time.
‘I know nothing,’ answered Litvinov. ‘I am to see her again. But she will not stay.’
‘Ah!bon voyage!’
‘No, she will not stay. But I’m not thinking of her either now, I am thinking of what you said to me, what you have promised me.’
Irina looked up at him from under her eyelids.
‘Ungrateful one! aren’t you content yet?’
‘No, Irina, I’m not content. You have made me happy, but I’m not content, and you understand me.’
‘That is, I——’
‘Yes, you understand me. Remember your words, remember what you wrote to me. I can’t share you with others; no, no, I can’t consent to the pitiful rôle of secret lover; not my life alone, this other life too I have flung at your feet, I have renounced everything, I have crushed it all to dust, without compunction and beyond recall; but in return I trust, I firmly believe, that you too will keep your promise, and unite your lot with mine for ever.’
‘You want me to run away with you? I am ready....’ (Litvinov bent down to her hands in ecstasy.) ‘I am ready. I will not go back from my word. But have you yourself thoughtover all the difficulties—have you made preparations?’
‘I? I have not had time yet to think over or prepare anything, but only say yes, let me act, and before a month is over....’
‘A month! we start for Italy in a fortnight.’
‘A fortnight, then, is enough for me. O Irina, you seem to take my proposition coldly; perhaps it seems unpractical to you, but I am not a boy, I am not used to comforting myself with dreams, I know what a tremendous step this is, I know what a responsibility I am taking on myself; but I can see no other course. Think of it, I must break every tie with the past, if only not to be a contemptible liar in the eyes of the girl I have sacrificed for you!’
Irina drew herself up suddenly and her eyes flashed.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Grigory Mihalitch! If I decide, if I run away, then it will at least be with a man who does it for my sake, for my sake simply, and not in order that he may not degrade himself in the good opinion of a phlegmatic young person, with milk and water,du lait coupéinstead of blood, in her veins! And I must tell you too, it’s the first time, I confess, that it’s been my lot to hear that the man I honour with my regard is deserving of commiseration,playing a pitiful part! I know a far more pitiful part, the part of a man who doesn’t know what is going on in his own heart!’
Litvinov drew himself up in his turn.
‘Irina,’ he was beginning——
But all at once she clapped both hands to her forehead, and with a convulsive motion, flinging herself on his breast, she embraced him with force beyond a woman’s.
‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ she began, with a shaking voice, ‘forgive me, Grigory! You see how corrupted I am, how horrid I am, how jealous and wicked! You see how I need your aid, your indulgence! Yes, save me, drag me out of this mire, before I am quite ruined! Yes, let us run away, let us run away from these people, from this society to some far off, fair, free country! Perhaps your Irina will at last be worthier of the sacrifices you are making for her! Don’t be angry with me, forgive me, my sweet, and know that I will do everything you command, I will go anywhere you will take me!’
Litvinov’s heart was in a turmoil. Irina clung closer than before to him with all her youthful supple body. He bent over her fragrant, disordered tresses, and in an intoxication of gratitude and ecstasy, he hardly dared to caress them with his hand, he hardly touched them with his lips.
‘Irina, Irina,’ he repeated,—‘my angel....’
She suddenly raised her head, listened....
‘It’s my husband’s step, ... he has gone into his room,’ she whispered, and, moving hurriedly away, she crossed over to another armchair. Litvinov was getting up.... ‘What are you doing?’ she went on in the same whisper; ‘you must stay, he suspects you as it is. Or are you afraid of him?’ She did not take her eyes off the door. ‘Yes, it’s he; he will come in here directly. Tell me something, talk to me.’ Litvinov could not at once recover himself and was silent. ‘Aren’t you going to the theatre to-morrow?’ she uttered aloud. ‘They’re givingLe Verre d’Eau, an old-fashioned piece, and Plessy is awfully affected.... We’re as though we were in a perfect fever,’ she added, dropping her voice. ‘We can’t do anything like this; we must think things over well. I ought to warn you that all my money is in his hands;mais j’ai mes bijoux. We’ll go to Spain, would you like that?’ She raised her voice again. ‘Why is it all actresses get so fat? Madeleine Brohan for instance.... Do talk, don’t sit so silent. My head is going round. But you, you must not doubt me.... I will let you know where to come to-morrow. Only it was a mistake to have told that young lady....Ah, mais c’est charmant!’ she cried suddenly and with a nervouslaugh, she tore the lace edge of her handkerchief.
‘May I come in?’ asked Ratmirov from the other room.
‘Yes ... yes.’
The door opened, and in the doorway appeared the general. He scowled on seeing Litvinov; however, he bowed to them, that is to say, he bent the upper portion of his person.
‘I did not know you had a visitor,’ he said: ‘je vous demande pardon de mon indiscrétion. So you still find Baden entertaining, M’sieu—Litvinov?’
Ratmirov always uttered Litvinov’s surname with hesitation, every time, as though he had forgotten it, and could not at once recall it.... In this way, as well as by the lofty flourish of his hat in saluting him, he meant to insult his pride.
‘I am not bored here,m’sieu le général.’
‘Really? Well, I find Baden fearfully boring. We are soon going away, are we not, Irina Pavlovna?Assez de Bade comme ça.By the way, I’ve won you five hundred francs to-day.’
Irina stretched out her hand coquettishly.
‘Where are they? Please let me have them for pin-money.’
‘You shall have them, you shall have them.... You are going, M’sieu—Litvinov?’
‘Yes, I am going, as you see.’
Ratmirov again bent his body.
‘Till we meet again!’
‘Good-bye, Grigory Mihalitch,’ said Irina. ‘I will keep my promise.’
‘What is that? May I be inquisitive?’ her husband queried.
Irina smiled.
‘No, it was only ... something we’ve been talking of.C’est à propos du voyage ... où il vous plaira.You know—Stael’s book?’
‘Ah! ah! to be sure, I know. Charming illustrations.’
Ratmirov seemed on the best of terms with his wife; he called her by her pet name in addressing her.
‘Better not think now, really,’ Litvinov repeated, as he strode along the street, feeling that the inward riot was rising up again in him. ‘The thing’s decided. She will keep her promise, and it only remains for me to take all necessary steps.... Yet she hesitates, it seems.’... He shook his head. His own designs struck even his own imagination in a strange light; there was a smack of artificiality, of unreality about them. One cannot dwell long upon the same thoughts; they gradually shift like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope ... one peeps in, and already the shapes before one’s eyes are utterly different. A sensation of intense weariness overcame Litvinov.... If he could for one short hour but rest!... But Tanya? He started, and, without reflecting even, turned submissively homewards, merely struck by the idea, that this day was tossing him like a ball from one to the other.... No matter; he must make an end. He wentback to his hotel, and with the same submissiveness, insensibility, numbness, without hesitation or delay, he went to see Tatyana.
He was met by Kapitolina Markovna. From the first glance at her, he knew that she knew about it all; the poor maiden lady’s eyes were swollen with weeping, and her flushed face, fringed with her dishevelled white locks, expressed dismay and an agony of indignation, sorrow, and boundless amazement. She was on the point of rushing up to Litvinov, but she stopped short, and, biting her quivering lip, she looked at him as though she would supplicate him, and kill him, and assure herself that it was a dream, a senseless, impossible thing, wasn’t it?
‘Here you ... you are come,’ she began.... The door from the next room opened instantaneously, and with a light tread Tatyana came in; she was of a transparent pallor, but she was quite calm.
She gently put one arm round her aunt and made her sit down beside her.
‘You sit down too, Grigory Mihalitch,’ she said to Litvinov, who was standing like one distraught at the door. ‘I am very glad to see you once more. I have informed auntie of your decision, our common decision; she fully shares it and approves of it.... Without mutual lovethere can be no happiness, mutual esteem alone is not enough’ (at the word ‘esteem’ Litvinov involuntarily looked down) ‘and better to separate now, than to repent later. Isn’t it, aunt?’
‘Yes, of course,’ began Kapitolina Markovna, ‘of course, Tanya darling, the man who does not know how to appreciate you ... who could bring himself——’
‘Aunt, aunt,’ Tatyana interrupted, ‘remember what you promised me. You always told me yourself: truth, Tatyana, truth before everything—and independence. Well, truth’s not always sweet, nor independence either; or else where would be the virtue of it?’
She kissed Kapitolina Markovna on her white hair, and turning to Litvinov, she went on:
‘We propose, aunt and I, leaving Baden.... I think it will be more comfortable so for all of us.’
‘When do you think of going?’ Litvinov said thickly. He remembered that Irina had said the very same words to him not long before.
Kapitolina Markovna was darting forward, but Tatyana held her back, with a caressing touch on her shoulder.
‘Probably soon, very soon.’
‘And will you allow me to ask where youintend going?’ Litvinov said in the same voice.
‘First to Dresden, then probably to Russia.’
‘But what can you want to know that for now, Grigory Mihalitch?’ ... cried Kapitolina Markovna.
‘Aunt, aunt,’ Tatyana interposed again. A brief silence followed.
‘Tatyana Petrovna,’ began Litvinov, ‘you know how agonisingly painful and bitter my feelings must be at this instant.’
Tatyana got up.
‘Grigory Mihalitch,’ she said, ‘we will not talk about that ... if you please, I beg you for my sake, if not for your own. I have known you long enough, and I can very well imagine what you must be feeling now. But what’s the use of talking, of touching a sore’ (she stopped; it was clear she wanted to stem the emotion rushing upon her, to swallow the rising tears; she succeeded)—‘why fret a sore we cannot heal? Leave that to time. And now I have to ask a service of you, Grigory Mihalitch; if you will be so good, I will give you a letter directly: take it to the post yourself, it is rather important, but aunt and I have no time now.... I shall be much obliged to you. Wait a minute.... I will bring it directly....’
In the doorway Tatyana glanced uneasily atKapitolina Markovna; but she was sitting with such dignity and decorum, with such a severe expression on her knitted brows and tightly compressed lips, that Tatyana merely gave her a significant nod and went out.
But scarcely had the door closed behind her, when every trace of dignity and severity instantaneously vanished from Kapitolina Markovna’s face; she got up, ran on tiptoe up to Litvinov, and all hunched together and trying to look him in the face, she began in a quaking tearful whisper:
‘Good God,’ she said, ‘Grigory Mihalitch, what does it mean? is it a dream or what?Yougive up Tanya, you tired of her, you breaking your word! You doing this, Grigory Mihalitch, you on whom we all counted as if you were a stone wall! You? you? you, Grisha?’... Kapitolina Markovna stopped. ‘Why, you will kill her, Grigory Mihalitch,’ she went on, without waiting for an answer, while her tears fairly coursed in fine drops over her cheeks. ‘You mustn’t judge by her bearing up now, you know her character! She never complains; she does not think of herself, so others must think of her! She keeps saying to me, “Aunt, we must save our dignity!†but what’s dignity, when I foresee death, death before us?’... Tatyana’s chair creaked in the next room. ‘Yes, I foresee death,’ the old ladywent on still more softly. ‘And how can such a thing have come about? Is it witchcraft, or what? It’s not long since you were writing her the tenderest letters. And in fact can an honest man act like this? I’m a woman, free, as you know, from prejudice of any sort,esprit fort, and I have given Tanya too the same sort of education, she too has a free mind....’
‘Aunt!’ came Tatyana’s voice from the next room.
‘But one’s word of honour is a duty, Grigory Mihalitch, especially for people of your, of my principles! If we’re not going to recognise duty, what is left us? This cannot be broken off in this way, at your whim, without regard to what may happen to another! It’s unprincipled ... yes, it’s a crime; a strange sort of freedom!’
‘Aunt, come here please,’ was heard again.
‘I’m coming, my love, I’m coming....’ Kapitolina Markovna clutched at Litvinov’s hand.—‘I see you are angry, Grigory Mihalitch.’... (‘Me! me angry?’ he wanted to exclaim, but his tongue was dumb.) ‘I don’t want to make you angry—oh, really, quite the contrary! I’ve come even to entreat you; think again while there is time; don’t destroy her, don’t destroy your own happiness, she will still trust you, Grisha, she will believe in you, nothing is lostyet; why, she loves you as no one will ever love you! Leave this hateful Baden-Baden, let us go away together, only throw off this enchantment, and, above all, have pity, have pity——’
‘Aunt!’ called Tatyana, with a shade of impatience in her voice.
But Kapitolina Markovna did not hear her.
‘Only say “yes,â€â€™ she repeated to Litvinov; ‘and I will still make everything smooth.... You need only nod your head to me, just one little nod like this.’
Litvinov would gladly, he felt, have died at that instant; but the word ‘yes’ he did not utter, and he did not nod his head.
Tatyana reappeared with a letter in her hand. Kapitolina Markovna at once darted away from Litvinov, and, averting her face, bent low over the table, as though she were looking over the bills and papers that lay on it.
Tatyana went up to Litvinov.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘is the letter I spoke of.... You will go to the post at once with it, won’t you?’
Litvinov raised his eyes.... Before him, really, stood his judge. Tatyana struck him as taller, slenderer; her face, shining with unwonted beauty, had the stony grandeur of a statue’s; her bosom did not heave, and her gown, of one colour and straight as a Greek chiton, fell in thelong, unbroken folds of marble drapery to her feet, which were hidden by it. Tatyana was looking straight before her, only at Litvinov; her cold, calm gaze, too, was the gaze of a statue. He read his sentence in it; he bowed, took a letter from the hand held out so immovably to him, and silently withdrew.
Kapitolina Markovna ran to Tatyana; but the latter turned off her embraces and dropped her eyes; a flush of colour spread over her face, and with the words, ‘and now, the sooner the better,’ she went into the bedroom. Kapitolina Markovna followed her with hanging head.
The letter, entrusted to Litvinov by Tatyana, was addressed to one of her Dresden friends—a German lady—who let small furnished apartments. Litvinov dropped the letter into the post-box, and it seemed to him as though with that tiny scrap of paper he was dropping all his past, all his life into the tomb. He went out of the town, and strolled a long time by narrow paths between vineyards; he could not shake off the persistent sensation of contempt for himself, like the importunate buzzing of flies in summer: an unenviable part, indeed, he had played in the last interview.... And when he went back to his hotel, and after a little time inquired about the ladies, he was told that immediately after he had gone out, they hadgiven orders to be driven to the railway station, and had departed by the mail train—to what destination was not known. Their things had been packed and their bills paid ever since the morning. Tatyana had asked Litvinov to take her letter to the post, obviously with the object of getting him out of the way. He ventured to ask the hall-porter whether the ladies had left any letters for him, but the porter replied in the negative, and looked amazed even; it was clear that this sudden exit from rooms taken for a week struck him too as strange and dubious. Litvinov turned his back on him, and locked himself up in his room.
He did not leave it till the following day: the greater part of the night he was sitting at the table, writing, and tearing what he had written.... The dawn was already beginning when he finished his task—it was a letter to Irina.
This was what was in this letter to Irina:
‘My betrothed went away yesterday; we shall never see each other again.... I do not know even for certain where she is going to live. With her, she takes all that till now seemed precious and desirable to me; all my previous ideas, my plans, my intentions, have gone with her; my labours even are wasted, my work of years ends in nothing, all my pursuits have no meaning, no applicability; all that is dead; myself, my old self, is dead and buried since yesterday. I feel, I see, I know this clearly ... far am I from regretting this. Not to lament of it, have I begun upon this to you.... As though I could complain when you love me, Irina! I wanted only to tell you that, of all this dead past, all those hopes and efforts, turned to smoke and ashes, there is only one thing left living, invincible, my love for you. Except that love, nothing is left for me; to say it is the solething precious to me, would be too little; I live wholly in that love; that love is my whole being; in it are my future, my career, my vocation, my country! You know me, Irina; you know that fine talk of any sort is foreign to my nature, hateful to me, and however strong the words in which I try to express my feelings, you will have no doubts of their sincerity, you will not suppose them exaggerated. I’m not a boy, in the impulse of momentary ecstasy, lisping unreflecting vows to you, but a man of matured age—simply and plainly, almost with terror, telling you what he has recognised for unmistakable truth. Yes, your love has replaced everything for me—everything, everything! Judge for yourself: can I leave this myallin the hands of another? can I let him dispose of you? You—you will belong to him, my whole being, my heart’s blood will belong to him—while I myself ... where am I? what am I? An outsider—an onlooker ... looking on at my own life! No, that’s impossible, impossible! To share, to share in secret that without which it’s useless, impossible to live ... that’s deceit and death. I know how great a sacrifice I am asking of you, without any sort of right to it; indeed, what can give one a right to sacrifice? But I am not acting thus from egoism: an egoist would find it easierand smoother not to raise this question at all. Yes, my demands are difficult, and I am not surprised that they alarm you. The people among whom you have to live are hateful to you, you are sick of society, but are you strong enough to throw up that society? to trample on the success it has crowned you with? to rouse public opinion against you—the opinion of these hateful people? Ask yourself, Irina, don’t take a burden upon you greater than you can bear. I don’t want to reproach you; but remember: once already you could not hold out against temptation. I can give you so little in return for all you are losing. Hear my last word: if you don’t feel capable to-morrow, to-day even, of leaving all and following me—you see how boldly I speak, how little I spare myself,—if you are frightened at the uncertainty of the future, and estrangement and solitude and the censure of men, if you cannot rely on yourself, in fact, tell me so openly and without delay, and I will go away; I shall go with a broken heart, but I shall bless you for your truthfulness. But if you really, my beautiful, radiant queen, love a man so petty, so obscure as I, and are really ready to share his fate,—well, then, give me your hand, and let us set off together on our difficult way! Only understand, my decision is unchanging; either all or nothing.It’s unreasonable ... but I could not do otherwise—I cannot, Irina! I love you too much.—Yours,G. L.’
Litvinov did not much like this letter himself; it did not quite truly and exactly express what he wanted to say; it was full of awkward expressions, high flown or bookish, and doubtless it was not better than many of the other letters he had torn up; but it was the last, the chief point was thoroughly stated anyway, and harassed, and worn out, Litvinov did not feel capable of dragging anything else out of his head. Besides he did not possess the faculty of putting his thought into literary form, and like all people with whom it is not habitual, he took great trouble over the style. His first letter was probably the best; it came warmer from the heart. However that might be, Litvinov despatched his missive to Irina.
She replied in a brief note:
‘Come to me to-day,’ she wrote to him: ‘hehas gone away for the whole day. Your letter has greatly disturbed me. I keep thinking, thinking ... and my head is in a whirl. I am very wretched, but you love me, and I am happy. Come. Yours,I.’
She was sitting in her boudoir when Litvinov went in. He was conducted there by the samelittle girl of thirteen who on the previous day had watched for him on the stairs. On the table before Irina was standing an open, semi-circular, cardboard box of lace: she was carelessly turning over the lace with one hand, in the other she was holding Litvinov’s letter. She had only just left off crying; her eyelashes were wet, and her eyelids swollen; on her cheeks could be seen the traces of undried tears not wiped away. Litvinov stood still in the doorway; she did not notice his entrance.
‘You are crying?’ he said wonderingly.
She started, passed her hand over her hair and smiled.
‘Why are you crying?’ repeated Litvinov. She pointed in silence to the letter. ‘So you were ... over that,’ he articulated haltingly.
‘Come here, sit down,’ she said, ‘give me your hand. Well, yes, I was crying ... what are you surprised at? Is that nothing?’ she pointed again to the letter.
Litvinov sat down.
‘I know it’s not easy, Irina, I tell you so indeed in my letter ... I understand your position. But if you believe in the value of your love for me, if my words have convinced you, you ought, too, to understand what I feel now at the sight of your tears. I have come here, like a man on his trial, and I await what is to be mysentence? Death or life? Your answer decides everything. Only don’t look at me with those eyes.... They remind me of the eyes I saw in old days in Moscow.’
Irina flushed at once, and turned away, as though herself conscious of something evil in her gaze.
‘Why do you say that, Grigory? For shame! You want to know my answer ... do you mean to say you can doubt it? You are troubled by my tears ... but you don’t understand them. Your letter, dearest, has set me thinking. Here you write that my love has replaced everything for you, that even your former studies can never now be put into practice; but I ask myself, can a man live for love alone? Won’t it weary him at last, won’t he want an active career, and won’t he cast the blame on what drew him away from active life? That’s the thought that dismays me, that’s what I am afraid of, and not what you imagine.’
Litvinov looked intently at Irina, and Irina intently looked at him, as though each would penetrate deeper and further into the soul of the other, deeper and further than word can reach, or word betray.
‘You are wrong in being afraid of that,’ began Litvinov. ‘I must have expressed myself badly. Weariness? Inactivity? With the new impetusyour love will give me? O Irina, in your love there’s a whole world for me, and I can’t yet foresee myself what may develop from it.’
Irina grew thoughtful.
‘Where are we going?’ she whispered.
‘Where? We will talk of that later. But, of course, then ... then you agree? you agree, Irina?’
She looked at him. ‘And you will be happy?’
‘O Irina!’
‘You will regret nothing? Never?’
She bent over the cardboard box, and again began looking over the lace in it.
‘Don’t be angry with me, dear one, for attending to this trash at such a moment.... I am obliged to go to a ball at a certain lady’s, these bits of finery have been sent me, and I must choose to-day. Ah! I am awfully wretched!’ she cried suddenly, and she laid her face down on the edge of the box. Tears began falling again from her eyes.... She turned away; the tears might spoil the lace.
‘Irina, you are crying again,’ Litvinov began uneasily.
‘Ah, yes, again,’ Irina interposed hurriedly. ‘O Grigory, don’t torture me, don’t torture yourself!... Let us be free people! What does it matter if I do cry! And indeed do I know myself why my tears are flowing? You know, you have heard my decision, you believeit will not be changed. That I agree to ... What was it you said?... to all or nothing ... what more would you have? Let us be free! Why these mutual chains? We are alone together now, you love me. I love you; is it possible we have nothing to do but wringing our thoughts out of each other? Look at me, I don’t want to talk about myself, I have never by one word hinted that for me perhaps it was not so easy to set at nought my duty as a wife ... and, of course, I don’t deceive myself, I know I am a criminal, and thathehas a right to kill me. Well, what of it? Let us be free, I say. To-day is ours—a life-time’s ours.’
She got up from the arm-chair and looked at Litvinov with her head thrown back, faintly smiling and moving her eyebrows, while with one arm bare to the elbow she pushed back from her face a long tress on which a few tears glistened. A rich scarf slipped from the table and fell on the floor at Irina’s feet. She trampled contemptuously on it. ‘Or don’t you like me, to-day? Have I grown ugly since yesterday? Tell me, have you often seen a prettier hand? And this hair? Tell me, do you love me?’
She clasped him in both arms, held his head close to her bosom, her comb fell out with a ringing sound, and her falling hair wrapped him in a soft flood of fragrance.
Litvinov walked up and down his room in the hotel, his head bowed in thought. He had now to pass from theory to practice, to devise ways and means for flight, for moving to unknown countries.... But, strange to say, he was not pondering so much upon ways and means as upon whether actually, beyond doubt, the decision had been reached on which he had so obstinately insisted? Had the ultimate, irrevocable word been uttered? But Irina to be sure had said to him at parting, ‘Act, act, and when every thing is ready, only let me know.’ That was final! Away with all doubts.... He must proceed to action. And Litvinov proceeded—in the meantime—to calculation. Money first of all. Litvinov had, he found, in ready money one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight guldens, in French money, two thousand eight hundred and fifty-five francs; the sum was trifling, but it was enough for the first necessities, and then he must at once write tohis father to send him all he could; he would have to sell the forest part of the land. But on what pretext?... Well, a pretext would be found. Irina had spoken, it’s true, of herbijoux, but that must not be taken into his reckoning; that, who knows, might come in for a rainy day. He had besides a good Geneva watch, for which he might get ... well, say, four hundred francs. Litvinov went to a banker’s, and with much circumlocution introduced the question whether it was possible, in case of need, to borrow money; but bankers at Baden are wary old foxes, and in response to such circumlocutions they promptly assume a drooping and blighted air, for all the world like a wild flower whose stalk has been severed by the scythe; some indeed laugh outright in your face, as though appreciating an innocent joke on your part. Litvinov, to his shame, even tried his luck at roulette, even, oh ignominy! put a thaler on the number thirty, corresponding with his own age. He did this with a view to augmenting and rounding off his capital; and if he did not augment it, he certainly did round off his capital by losing the odd twenty-eight guldens. There was a second question, also not an unimportant one; that was the passport. But for a woman a passport is not quite so obligatory, and there are countrieswhere it is not required at all, Belgium, for instance, and England; besides, one might even get some other passport, not Russian. Litvinov pondered very seriously on all this; his decision was firm, absolutely unwavering, and yet all the time against his will, overriding his will, something not serious, almost humorous came in, filtered through his musings, as though the very enterprise were a comic business, and no one ever did elope with any one in reality, but only in plays and novels, and perhaps somewhere in the provinces, in some of those remote districts, where, according to the statements of travellers, people are literally sick continually fromennui. At that point Litvinov recalled how an acquaintance of his, a retired cornet, Batsov, had eloped with a merchant’s daughter in a staging sledge with bells and three horses, having as a preliminary measure made the parents drunk, and adopted the same precaution as well with the bride, and how, as it afterwards turned out, he was outwitted and within an ace of a thrashing into the bargain. Litvinov felt exceedingly irritated with himself for such inappropriate reminiscences, and then with the recollection of Tatyana, her sudden departure, all that grief and suffering and shame, he felt only too acutely that the affair he was arranging was deadly earnest, and how right hehad been when he had told Irina that his honour even left no other course open.... And again at the mere name something of flame turned with sweet ache about his heart and died away again.
The tramp of horses’ hoofs sounded behind him.... He moved aside.... Irina overtook him on horseback; beside her rode the stout general. She recognised Litvinov, nodded to him, and lashing her horse with a sidestroke of her whip, she put him into a gallop, and suddenly dashed away at headlong speed. Her dark veil fluttered in the wind....
‘Pas si vite! Nom de Dieu! pas si vite!’ cried the general, and he too galloped after her.
The next morning Litvinov had only just come home from seeing the banker, with whom he had had another conversation on the playful instability of our exchange, and the best means of sending money abroad, when the hotel porter handed him a letter. He recognised Irina’s handwriting, and without breaking the seal—a presentiment of evil, Heaven knows why, was astir in him—he went into his room. This was what he read (the letter was in French):
‘My dear one, I have been thinking all night of your plan.... I am not going to shuffle with you. You have been open with me, and I will be open with you; Icannotrun away with you, Ihave not the strengthto do it. I feel how I am wronging you; my second sin is greater than the first, I despise myself, my cowardice, I cover myself with reproaches, but I cannot change myself. In vain I tell myself that I have destroyed your happiness, that you have the right now to regardme as a frivolous flirt, that I myself drew you on, that I have given you solemn promises.... I am full of horror, of hatred for myself, but I can’t do otherwise, I can’t, I can’t. I don’t want to justify myself, I won’t tell you I was carried away myself ... all that’s of no importance; but I want to tell you, and to say it again and yet again, I am yours, yours for ever, do with me as you will when you will, free from all obligation, from all responsibility! I am yours.... But run away, throw up everything ... no! no! no! I besought you to save me, I hoped to wipe out everything, to burn up the past as in a fire ... but I see there is no salvation for me; I see the poison has gone too deeply into me; I see one cannot breathe this atmosphere for years with impunity. I have long hesitated whether to write you this letter, I dread to think what decision you may come to, I trust only to your love for me. But I felt it would be dishonest on my part to hide the truth from you—especially as perhaps you have already begun to take the first steps for carrying out our project. Ah! it was lovely but impracticable. O my dear one, think me a weak, worthless woman, despise, but don’t abandon me, don’t abandon your Irina!... To leave this life I have not the courage, but live it without you I cannot either. We soongo back to Petersburg, come there, live there, we will find occupation for you, your labours in the past shall not be thrown away, you shall find good use for them ... only live near me, only love me; such as I am, with all my weaknesses and my vices, and believe me, no heart will ever be so tenderly devoted to you as the heart of your Irina. Come soon to me, I shall not have an instant’s peace until I see you.—Yours, yours, yours,I.’
The blood beat like a sledge-hammer in Litvinov’s head, then slowly and painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone in it. He read through Irina’s letter, and just as on that day at Moscow he fell in exhaustion on the sofa, and stayed there motionless. A dark abyss seemed suddenly to have opened on all sides of him, and he stared into this darkness in senseless despair. And so again, again deceit, no, worse than deceit, lying and baseness.... And life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to—the last prop in fragments too! ‘Come after us to Petersburg,’ he repeated with a bitter inward laugh, ‘we will find you occupation.... Find me a place as a head clerk, eh? and who arewe?Here there’s a hint of her past. Here we have the secret, hideoussomething I know nothing of, but which she has been trying to wipe out, to burn as in a fire. Here we have that world of intrigues, of secret relations, of shameful stories of Byelskys and Dolskys.... And what a future, what a lovely part awaiting me! To live close to her, visit her, share with her the morbid melancholy of the lady of fashion who is sick and weary of the world, but can’t live outside its circle, be the friend of the house of course, of his Excellency ... until ... until the whim changes and the plebeian lover loses his piquancy, and is replaced by that fat general or Mr. Finikov—that’s possible and pleasant, and I dare say useful.... She talks of a good use for my talents?... but the other project’s impracticable, impracticable....’ In Litvinov’s soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary impulses of fury.... Every expression in Irina’s letter roused his indignation, her very assertions of her unchanging feelings affronted him. ‘She can’t let it go like that,’ he cried at last, ‘I won’t allow her to play with my life so mercilessly.’
Litvinov jumped up, snatched his hat. But what was he to do? Run to her? Answer her letter? He stopped short, and his hands fell.
‘Yes; what was to be done?’
Had he not himself put this fatal choice to her? It had not turned out as he had wished ... there was that risk about every choice. She had changed her mind, it was true; she herself had declared at first that she would throw up everything and follow him; that was true too; but she did not deny her guilt, she called herself a weak woman; she did not want to deceive him, she had been deceived in herself.... What answer could be made to that? At any rate she was not hypocritical, she was not deceiving him ... she was open, remorselessly open. There was nothing forced her to speak out, nothing to prevent her from soothing him with promises, putting things off, and keeping it all in uncertainty till her departure ... till her departure with her husband for Italy? But she had ruined his life, ruined two lives.... What of that?
But as regards Tatyana, she was not guilty; the guilt was his, his, Litvinov’s alone, and he had no right to shake off the responsibility his own sin had laid with iron yoke upon him.... All this was so; but what was left him to do now?
Again he flung himself on the sofa and again in gloom, darkly, dimly, without trace, with devouring swiftness, the minutes raced past....
‘And why not obey her?’ flashed through his brain. ‘She loves me, she is mine, and in our very yearning towards each other, in this passion, which after so many years has burst upon us, and forced its way out with such violence, is there not something inevitable, irresistible, like a law of nature? Live in Petersburg ... and shall I be the first to be put in such a position? And how could we be in safety together?...’
And he fell to musing, and Irina’s shape, in the guise in which it was imprinted for ever in his late memories, softly rose before him.... But not for long.... He mastered himself, and with a fresh outburst of indignation drove away from him both those memories and that seductive image.
‘You give me to drink from that golden cup,’ he cried, ‘but there is poison in the draught, and your white wings are besmirched with mire.... Away! Remain here with you after the way I ... I drove away my betrothed ... a deed of infamy, of infamy!’ He wrung his hands with anguish, and another face with the stamp of suffering on its still features, with dumb reproach in its farewell eyes, rose from the depths....
And for a long time Litvinov was in this agony still; for a long time, his tortured thought, like a man fever-stricken, tossed from side toside.... He grew calm at last; at last he came to a decision. From the very first instant he had a presentiment of this decision; ... it had appeared to him at first like a distant, hardly perceptible point in the midst of the darkness and turmoil of his inward conflict; then it had begun to move nearer and nearer, till it ended by cutting with icy edge into his heart.
Litvinov once more dragged his box out of the corner, once more he packed all his things, without haste, even with a kind of stupid carefulness, rang for the waiter, paid his bill, and despatched to Irina a note in Russian to the following purport:
‘I don’t know whether you are doing me a greater wrong now than then; but I know this present blow is infinitely heavier.... It is the end. You tell me, “I cannotâ€; and I repeat to you, “I cannot ...†do what you want. I cannot and I don’t want to. Don’t answer me. You are not capable of giving me the only answer I would accept. I am going away to-morrow early by the first train. Good-bye, may you be happy! We shall in all probability not see each other again.’
Till night-time Litvinov did not leave his room; God knows whether he was expecting anything. About seven o’clock in the eveninga lady in a black mantle with a veil on her face twice approached the steps of his hotel. Moving a little aside and gazing far away into the distance, she suddenly made a resolute gesture with her hand, and for the third time went towards the steps....
‘Where are you going, Irina Pavlovna?’ she heard a voice utter with effort behind her.
She turned with nervous swiftness.... Potugin ran up to her.
She stopped short, thought a moment, and fairly flung herself towards him, took his arm, and drew him away.
‘Take me away, take me away,’ she repeated breathlessly.
‘What is it, Irina Pavlovna?’ he muttered in bewilderment.
‘Take me away,’ she reiterated with redoubled force, ‘if you don’t want me to remain for ever ... there.’
Potugin bent his head submissively, and hurriedly they went away together.
The following morning early Litvinov was perfectly ready for his journey—into his room walked ... Potugin.
He went up to him in silence, and in silence shook his hand. Litvinov, too, said nothing. Both of them wore long faces, and both vainly tried to smile.
‘I came to wish you a good journey,’ Potugin brought out at last.
‘And how did you know I was going to-day?’ asked Litvinov.
Potugin looked on the floor around him.... ‘I became aware of it ... as you see. Our last conversation took in the end such a strange turn.... I did not want to part from you without expressing my sincere good feeling for you.’
‘You have good feeling for me now ... when I am going away?’
Potugin looked mournfully at Litvinov. ‘Ah, Grigory Mihalitch, Grigory Mihalitch,’ he began with a short sigh, ‘it’s no time for that with us now, no time for delicacy or fencing. You don’t, so far as I have been able to perceive, take much interest in our national literature, and so, perhaps, you have no clear conception of Vaska Buslaev?’
‘Of whom?’
‘Of Vaska Buslaev, the hero of Novgorod ... in Kirsch-Danilov’s collection.’
‘What Buslaev?’ said Litvinov, somewhat puzzled by the unexpected turn of the conversation. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, never mind. I only wanted to draw your attention to something. Vaska Buslaev, after he had taken away his Novgorodians on apilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there, to their horror, bathed all naked in the holy river Jordan, for he believed not “in omen nor in dream, nor in the flight of birds,†this logical Vaska Buslaev climbed up Mount Tabor, and on the top of this mountain there lies a great stone, over which men of every kind have tried in vain to jump.... Vaska too ventured to try his luck. And he chanced upon a dead head, a human skull in his road; he kicked it away with his foot. So the skull said to him; “Why do you kick me? I knew how to live, and I know how to roll in the dust—and it will be the same with you.†And in fact, Vaska jumps over the stone, and he did quite clear it, but he caught his heel and broke his skull. And in this place, I must by the way observe that it wouldn’t be amiss for our friends, the Slavophils, who are so fond of kicking dead heads and decaying nationalities underfoot to ponder over that legend.’
‘But what does all that mean?’ Litvinov interposed impatiently at last. ‘Excuse me, it’s time for me....’
‘Why, this,’ answered Potugin, and his eyes beamed with such affectionate warmth as Litvinov had not even expected of him, ‘this, that you do not spurn a dead human head, and for your goodness, perhaps you may succeed inleaping over the fatal stone. I won’t keep you any longer, only let me embrace you at parting.’
‘I’m not going to try to leap over it even,’ Litvinov declared, kissing Potugin three times, and the bitter sensations filling his soul were replaced for an instant by pity for the poor lonely creature.
‘But I must go, I must go ...’ he moved about the room.
‘Can I carry anything for you?’ Potugin proffered his services.
‘No, thank you, don’t trouble, I can manage....’
He put on his cap, took up his bag. ‘So you say,’ he queried, stopping in the doorway, ‘you have seen her?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen her.’
‘Well ... tell me about her.’
Potugin was silent a moment. ‘She expected you yesterday ... and to-day she will expect you.’
‘Ah! Well, tell her.... No, there’s no need, no need of anything. Good-bye.... Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye, Grigory Mihalitch.... Let me say one word more to you. You still have time to listen to me; there’s more than half an hour before the train starts. You are returning toRussia.... There you will ... in time ... get to work.... Allow an old chatterbox—for, alas, I am a chatterbox, and nothing more—to give you advice for your journey. Every time it is your lot to undertake any piece of work, ask yourself: Are you serving the cause of civilisation, in the true and strict sense of the word; are you promoting one of the ideals of civilisation; have your labours that educating, Europeanising character which alone is beneficial and profitable in our day among us? If it is so, go boldly forward, you are on the right path, and your work is a blessing! Thank God for it! You are not alone now. You will not be a “sower in the desertâ€; there are plenty of workers ... pioneers ... even among us now.... But you have no ears for this now. Good-bye, don’t forget me!’
Litvinov descended the staircase at a run, flung himself into a carriage, and drove to the station, not once looking round at the town where so much of his personal life was left behind. He abandoned himself, as it were, to the tide; it snatched him up and bore him along, and he firmly resolved not to struggle against it ... all other exercise of independent will he renounced.
He was just taking his seat in the railway carriage.
‘Grigory Mihalitch ... Grigory....’ he heard a supplicating whisper behind him.
He started.... Could it be Irina? Yes; it was she. Wrapped in her maid’s shawl, a travelling hat on her dishevelled hair, she was standing on the platform, and gazing at him with worn and weary eyes.
‘Come back, come back, I have come for you,’ those eyes were saying. And what, what were they not promising? She did not move, she had not power to add a word; everything about her, even the disorder of her dress, everything seemed entreating forgiveness....
Litvinov was almost beaten, scarcely could he keep from rushing to her.... But the tide to which he had surrendered himself reasserted itself.... He jumped into the carriage, and turning round, he motioned Irina to a place beside him. She understood him. There was still time. One step, one movement, and two lives made one for ever would have been hurried away into the uncertain distance.... While she wavered, a loud whistle sounded and the train moved off.
Litvinov sank back, while Irina moved staggering to a seat, and fell on it, to the immense astonishment of a supernumerary diplomatic official who chanced to be lounging about the railway station. He was slightly acquaintedwith Irina, and greatly admired her, and seeing that she lay as though overcome by faintness, he imagined that she had ‘une attaque de nerfs,’ and therefore deemed it his duty, the dutyd’un galant chevalier, to go to her assistance. But his astonishment assumed far greater proportions when, at the first word addressed to her, she suddenly got up, repulsed his proffered arm, and hurrying out into the street, had in a few instants vanished in the milky vapour of fog, so characteristic of the climate of the Black Forest in the early days of autumn.