Asbeïn: From the Life of a Virtuoso

by Ossip Schubin

THIRD BOOK.

A short time after the fiasco of his opera Lensky resigned his office in ----. His position there had become unbearable to him. He had made no plans for the distant future; for the present he travelled with his family to Paris.

How happy Natalie could have felt here if the still depressed mood of Lensky had not caused her such heavy anxiety. Not that he had further shown himself in the slightest degree disagreeable to her--no, not a single direct reproof crossed his lips; he even, without speaking a word about it, begged her pardon for his momentary roughness by a thousand silent attentions. But what good did that do her? His happiness was gone; he was gloomy and taciturn. Faint-hearted, like all very self-indulgent men, even doubting his formerly revered talent as composer, for the moment he had completely lost his belief in himself.

She did what she could to distract him--all was in vain. And all might have been so pleasant! The Parisian artist world was so large that she quite easily, avoiding all impure elements contained therein, could associate only with those who were lovable, interesting, and sympathetic. Besides, she was now ready for the most exaggerated concessions. If Lensky had wished to write a ballet she would have invited the ballet dancers to breakfast, and been intimate with the première danseuse. The lovely imprudence which, even with her uncommon intellectual gifts, still made the foundation of her petted, undisciplined being, drove her from one exaggeration to another.

He gave a succession of concerts, and all Paris lay at his feet. Natalie sat in one of the first rows in the concert hall and rejoiced over the triumphs of her husband. Occasionally, if the hour for the concert was early, she brought her little son with her and taught him to be proud of his father. Little Nikolai looked charming in his Russian costume, with the broad velvet trousers and silk shirt. He always sat there quite brave and quiet, with the solemn expression of face of a child whom one has taken to church for the first time; only if the applause burst out quite too loudly, he became very excited and stood up on his chair in order to see his father better. Then Natalie kissed him, and blushed at her lack of restraint. And around them the audience whispered: "That is his child"--"Tiens! il a de la chance!"--"Ils sont adorables tous les deux!"--"On dit qu'elle est une princesse!"

After the concert she went with the little fellow in the green-room to fetch her husband. The most beautiful women in Paris crowded around him. He received their homage quite coolly, and while Natalie, smiling and polite, did honor to his fame, he played with his boy, whom he overwhelmed with caresses, without being at all confused by the presence of strangers. "Admire this if you must admire something!" he burst out once, angry at the intrusive enthusiasm of a very pretty American woman, and with that he raised the child on a table to show him to her. "He is worth the trouble," he growled, and truly such was the case!

One day, about the middle of May, when Natalie, somewhat out of breath, holding her boy with one hand, and a bunch of red roses in the other, came home to lunch, she found Lensky with two strangers in the little hotel drawing-room. One of them was a young man with long hair and short neck, in whom she recognized a famous piano virtuoso; the second, a small, dried-up man, with a yellow, hard, sharp face, she saw for the first time.

At her appearance they both withdrew. Lensky accompanied them out.

"How you have hurried," said he smiling, when he reëntered the room. "You are quite heated!"

"Yes, I hurried very much; I was afraid I would be late to lunch. I know how you hate unpunctuality." And then she sat down on the sofa, and handed her hat and shawl to the nurse, who had come in to get Nikolinka--a nurse by the name of Palagea, in a Russian national costume which created a furore on the boulevard.

"Why did you not take a carriage, little goose?" asked he.

"To economize, Boris Nikolaivitch," replied she, with mischievous earnestness. Then laughing up at him with her great tender eyes, she added: "Besides, the doctor has expressly advised me to take more exercise."

"The doctor?" said he, anxiously. "Do you feel ill? Why did you consult a physician?"

"Yes, why?" murmured she, softly. "Sit down on the sofa by me, so that I can whisper something to you."

"What are you talking about?" said he, hoarsely, without stirring. "What do you mean? What?"

"You are fabulously uncomprehending to-day," laughed she, and went up to him. "One cannot scream such a thing across the whole room, and as the mountain will not come to Mahomet"--she had now become very red; laying her hand on his shoulder, she whispered: "O Boris; can you still not guess?... I am so glad!"

"Natalie!" he burst out. "You do not mean to say" ... He shook her from him, stamped his foot, and with a furious exclamation left the room.

Ten minutes later, when he entered the little dining-room where they had served lunch, Natalie's maid announced that he must not wait for her mistress, as she was feeling ill. He hurried to her bedroom. She sat on a sofa, her hands in her lap. Her great eyes stared into the distance, she looked like a corpse.

He sat down by her, drew her on his knee, and overwhelmed her with caresses.

"You are right to be angry, quite right. I was detestable," said he; "but you know what a bear you have for a husband. It is only because I love you so dearly that now, just now, the thing is so inconvenient. Oh, my little dove, my heart!" He pressed the palms of her hands to his lips and stroked her cheeks.

Every vexation melted away in the warmth of his manner. She suddenly began to sob, but not from grief.

"Do you think, then, that I would not have been glad?" he said to her tenderly. "But now, do you see, just now----"

Then he told her the state of affairs. The man in the Havana brown overcoat was the famous impressario Morinsky, with whom Lensky had just made an engagement for a concert tour in the United States. Morinsky had offered him a small fortune. "You know how hard it is for me to part from you," he concluded. "I wished to take you with me--you and the boy, for he can put off school for another year. I thought it was the most favorable moment, and now--it is so stupid, so horribly stupid!"

She had listened very quietly; now she raised her head and said uneasily:

"And now you naturally will have to give up the American project?"

"That is impossible," replied he, turning his face from her, "but I will try--that is, I will put off my departure in any case until the great event is over."

"And then?" She had slipped down from his knee and walked up and down the room uneasily. "And then?" she repeated, while she beat on the floor quite imperiously with the tip of her little foot.

"Then," said he slowly. "Well, then you must either decide to accompany me and leave the children behind, or I must go alone."

"How long will you stay away?" she asked with short breath.

"Eight months, ten months."

"So--ten months!" she spoke slowly. "And you will part from me--voluntarily, without compelling necessity--for ten months?"

Her face had become ashy, the words fell harsh and cutting from her dry lips.

"You must not take the thing so desperately," replied Lensky, with an embarrassment which did not escape her. "Ten months are soon over."

Something that sounded half like a laugh, half like a cry of anguish escaped her lips. She stroked the hair back from her temples with both hands. Her eyes had suddenly become unnaturally large, and were opened uncommonly wide. They were no longer the eyes of a usually wise woman.

"Ten months!" she murmured, with extinguished voice, like one who speaks in the midst of an oppressive dream, "ten months--do you no longer remember how you used to miss me, if it was only a question of weeks, of days, and not--ten months! But this is no separation, this is a final parting, this is the end of all! Oh, do not look at me so!--I am not crazy, I know what I am saying--I know very well! You will come back--certainly you will come back, if no malicious illness snatches you away during your journey; but how will you come back? Like a stranger you will return under your own roof, and a stranger, from that hour, will you remain. You will have acquired other customs, other needs; the tender restrictions of family life will confine you like a forced burden! The good, and magnificent, and beautiful in you will still exist, because it is immortal like everything that is god-like; but it will be grown wild and soiled, and I will no longer be able to force my way through what has towered between me and your heart! And, more than all that, the sweet voice which, until now, has whispered such wonderful songs within you, will be silenced in the confusion of your wandering life; your genius will no longer be able to express itself, it will from then burn in you like a great unrest, and you will feel the treasure which Providence has implanted in you as an oppressive burden, and will no longer be able to find the magic word which can lift this treasure!"

He stared gloomily before him. "Ah, Boris! do not sin against yourself, because I have sinned against you," Natalie began once more, with hoarse, broken voice. "Do not let your wings be broken by this first disappointment. Your opera was wonderfully beautiful--yes--but it was not the best that you can give! Give your best, it will stand so high that the hand of envy can no longer reach it. Have patience, sacrifice the virtuoso to the composer in you, and you will see what a splendid reward you will reap!"

With heavily contracted brows, he listened to this speech, vibrating with desperation. When Natalie had ended, he remained silent. She believed she had conquered. Leaning against him she laid both arms around his neck, and whispered to him: "You will stay, Boris--will you not?--you will stay!"

For a little while he let her stay, then he freed himself from her arms, as one frees one's self from a shackle, and called out: "It cannot be--torment me no longer--I must go!" With that he sprang up to leave the room. At the door he turned round to Natalie, and said: "Are you coming? Lunch will be cold."

"Presently!" said Natalie, "presently!" She shivered, she felt the chill of a great fright in all her members. It was worse than she had believed! Something allured him away. After the first unpleasant surprise at the frustration of his plans had disappeared, he rejoiced at the opportunity of being able to free himself from the chain, and to separate himself from his family for a time. What she had feared for the future had already arrived--the gypsy element in his nature had awakened!

* * * * * *

The agreement between Lensky and the impressario was really completed, the contract was signed, Lensky's departure fixed for the beginning of October. Meanwhile, he would pass the summer quietly with his wife, in the country, in the vicinity of Paris.

The place which Natalie chose was about an hour's journey from Paris, and perhaps fifteen minutes from the railway-station, a charming old house in the shadiest corner of a park, in the midst of which a large castle stood empty. The castle was modern; the house, on the contrary, a carefully reconstructed ruin of the time of Francis First. The castle was called "Le Château des Ormes," and the small house "L'Erémitage." The last owner had restored it, in order that his favorite daughter might pass her honeymoon there. Since the daughter had died the Hermitage stood empty, and to reside in the castle was painful to the owner. Both were to let. Lensky left the choice to his wife. What would she have done with the large castle? The Hermitage pleased her better. The windows were all irregular, one small and narrow, another very broad, all surrounded by artistically carved and voluted stone framings. The trees grew up high above the roof, and through the whole day sang sweet, dreamy songs, to which a little brook, that ran close by the house, furnished a harmonic accompaniment.

The ground floor was built in accordance with the architecture of the early Renaissance period, with brown beams across the ceilings of the room, and artistic wainscoting on the walls. Gigantic marble mantels, iron chandeliers and sconces, and heavy furniture did what they could to transport the spectator's imagination back to the much sung old times of gay King Francis. At the right and left of the entrance door, set far back in its carved niche, grew lilies, tall and slender; they were in full bloom when the married pair moved in, and their white heads nodded in a friendly manner through the windows of the rooms even with the ground. Sage, lavender, and centifolias bloomed at their feet, tall rose-bushes nodded a fragrant greeting to them from above. The branches of the old trees before the windows were thick enough to partially exclude the sunbeams if they became too intrusive; not thick enough to completely bar the way for them.

In this lonely solitude, Natalie fought a last time for her happiness. She tried to make her whole home as attractive and poetic as possible, so that in Lensky's remembrance something might remain for which he must long. She no longer tormented him with jealous, isolating tenderness, but cared for his distraction and intellectual as well as artistic recreation. She knew how to allure not only the first musicians in Paris, but celebrities of the most different kinds from the capital and surrounding villas, to the Hermitage; earnest men of lofty aims and noble endeavors, together with an animation and susceptibility which did away with the hindering respect which towers between every plain, modest child of man and great people. It always gave Natalie pleasure to see Lensky in the company of these prominent men. He grew in such surroundings.

He was never very talkative; his intellectual capabilities were of a heavy calibre, unsuited for the purposes of small talk. But how he listened, what questions he asked! Then, quite without haste, he would make some remark so peculiarly sharp and far-reaching in reference to some impending political, artistic, or literary question, that, every time, an astonished silence would follow.

One of the guests once remarked: "If Lensky mingles in the conversation, it is as if one fired a cannon between pistol shots."

He was not one-sided in his interests, as other musicians. When one learned to know him more intimately, for every accurate observer it had always the appearance that his musical capabilities formed only a part of his universally abnormally gifted nature.

* * * * * *

Quietly and still animatedly passed the days, weeks, and months. Natalie never spoke of the approaching separation.

An inexplicable discomfort tormented Lensky. Natalie had guessed rightly--he had concluded the engagement with Morinsky with quite precipitate haste, not only in order thereby to win the opportunity of acquiring with one stroke a large sum of money which would put an end to his pecuniary difficulties, but because in intercourse with the old friends of his bachelor days in ---- he had first significantly realized how much he had had to restrain himself to live morally and uprightly at the side of his wife; and because his gypsy nature, bound for years, now demanded its rights.

Still it vexed him that Natalie remained so calm in the face of the approaching parting. Now, when the farewell drew near, his heart failed him. Did she, then, no longer love him?

The thought was unbearable to him, prevented him from working. He wrote everything wrong on the note paper.

The lilies were dead, the days became short, and the first leaves fell in the grass, but the foliage was still thick, only here and there one saw a yellow spot in a bluish green tree, and the rustling had no longer the old soft sound.

"The trees have lost their voice, they have become hoarse, the old melting sound is gone!" said Natalie. The roses, in truth bloomed more beautifully than in summer; still one saw, significantly, the approach of autumn, and Lensky had the repugnant feeling that near by something lay dying.

His work did not please him. Three times already he had heard Natalie pass by his door; each time he had thought, now she will come in; he had already stretched his arms out to her, but she did not come. He threw away his pen and sprang up to look for her.

It was a late September afternoon. It had rained for three days, and the air was cool.

Natalie sat in the brown-wainscoted ground-floor sitting-room, in one of the gigantic, high-backed arm-chairs near the chimney, in which flickered a gay wood fire. The windows were open. The noise from without of the rain drops softly gliding down between the leaves, the blustering of the high swollen brook, mingled with the crackling and popping of the burning wood.

In the middle of the room, on a large table with a dark-red cover, stood a copper bowl filled with champagne-colored Gloire de Dijon roses. From without came the melancholy odor of autumnal decay and mingled with the sweet breath of the flowers.

The veil of twilight sank down from the mighty rafters of the ceiling. The corners of the large, somewhat low room were already, as it were, rounded off by brown shadows. Freakish, pale reflections slid over the dark wainscoting, and over the brass and copper dishes which adorned it.

Little Kolia crouched on a stool before his mother, and with both tiny elbows rested on her lap, gazed earnestly and attentively up at her.

One could think of nothing more charming than this mother and this child. Involuntarily Lensky's heart beat high in his breast. "How beautiful my home is, how happy I am here. Why am I really going away?" he asked himself.

"Ah!" cried Natalie when he entered, pleased and at the same time surprised, for his appearance at this hour was something quite unusual. "Do you wish anything?"

He shook his brown, defiant head silently and sat down near the chimney opposite her. The little boy had sprung up, embarrassed, and now leaned against his mother, with his little arm round her neck.

"You have been telling him fairy tales," began Lensky.

"Oh, no! I told him of the ocean, and how one lives and is housed on the wide boundless water--of the ocean and of America. Before it was too dark we were busy with something much more important," said Natalie, and she pointed to a low child's table which was covered with writing materials and lined paper. "Show papa what we have finished, Nikolinka."

The little boy became very red and drew his brows together. "But, mamma," said he, excitedly stamping his foot, "why do you tell that? It is a surprise."

His mother stroked the offended child's cheek soothingly. "We will not give papa your letter to read, only show it to him, so that he can be pleased with it. Bring it, Nikolinka."

Resistingly the little fellow freed himself from his mother, then he brought the document, which was concealed behind a vase, and carried it, with importance as well as embarrassment, to his father. On the already extensively sealed envelope, between three lines, stood the unformed, but neatly and industriously written letters:

À

MONSIEUR BORIS LENSKY,

EN

AMÉRIQUE.

"The letter is to be sent to you when you are over there," explained Natalie.

"How nicely the wight writes for his five years," said Lensky touched, looking at the envelope. "You guided his hand, Natascha?"

"Oh, no!" declared Natalie.

"But you prompted him?"

"Certainly not; he thought it out all by himself; did you not, Nikolinka?" said Natalie.

The little one nodded earnestly; he was quite crimson with pride and embarrassment. His father took him between his knees, called him "Umnitza," which in Russian means paragon of wisdom, kissed and caressed him, then rang the bell for Palagea, and told him he must go now and wash his hands, and have his curls brushed smooth, and then he should take dinner with his parents, because he had been so clever.

When the child had tripped out at the nurse's hand, Lensky threw himself down on the stool at his wife's feet. It had now become quite dark. The heavy, regular-falling rain still rustled in the foliage without, in a dreamy, melancholy cadence.

"Listen; how sweet, how sad!" said Natalie, turning her head to the window, through which the landscape, behind its double veil of rain and twilight, looked to one like a greenish-gray chaos only, without any distinct outlines.

"The D-flat major prelude of Chopin," said Lensky.

She shook her head. "No, I did not think of that," whispered she. "But see! Sometimes it seems to me that the ghost of the poor young wife who died here creeps around the Hermitage, and sighs for the happiness which she might not finish enjoying. She died after the first year, while I, Boris--I was happy six years. It is too much for one human life. Sometimes--it is a sin; I know it--and still, sometimes I quite wished I might die, but I dare not; Kolia still needs me."

* * * * * *

Soon after this she brought a little girl into the world, who was baptized Marie, after the grandmother and the little dead sister.

A few weeks passed, she convalesced rapidly. The day of farewell came, on which everyone hastened, with everything overhurried, incessantly imagined there was too much to do in preparing for the journey, and finally had nothing more to do. The day on which all the usual occupations were sacrificed in honor of the pain of parting, when one aimlessly trifled away the hours, tormented by nervous unrest, which finally expressed itself in the dullest ennui.

* * * * * *

They sat together; now here, now there, and did not know what to do. Lensky was to take the six o'clock train to Paris; from there, the same evening, he would travel with Morinsky's troupe to Boulogne, for they would take ship in Liverpool for America.

The dinner-hour was changed from seven to four, lunch and breakfast were combined at ten o'clock. These irregular hours took away one's appetite, accustomed to regular hours, and increased the general discomfort.

In order to kill the last half-hour before dinner they took a walk through the immense, solitary park. Kolia went with them.

It was a beautiful October day, with a blue heaven over which only filmy white clouds spread themselves, and from which the sun looked down so sadly and mildly as only the October sun looks down on the dying beauty of the year. Masses of foliage still hung on the trees, but it was already withered--it no longer lived. And in the midst of the windless peace, one heard, again and again, the gentle sighing of a dead leaf that fell on the turf.

Both the parents were silent, only the little boy asked, from time to time, tender, important questions of his father, whom he loved very much, although he felt a kind of shyness of him. At first Lensky led the child by the hand, then he took him in his arms, in order to have the pleasure of holding the supple little body quite closely to him and feel the soft, warm little arms round his neck.

They hurried back to the house so as not to delay dinner, and naturally arrived much too early.

"Play me something for a farewell," begged Natalie.

"One of the Chopin nocturnes which I transposed for your sake?" asked he.

"No, just what you have in your heart," replied Natalie.

He took up his violin. It was the same violin which he had tried in the Palazzo Morsini, the Amati which Natalie had given him when they were betrothed. He was very excited, and became paler with every stroke.

The whole desperation of a great nature which feels an unavoidable degradation approaching, spoke from his improvisation, and in the midst of the passionate and painful madness rose melodies so pure, so beautifully holy, like the resting in heart-felt prayer of a nature all in uproar.

When he had finished and wished to put the violin back in the case in which he should take it with him to America, Natalie took it from his hand.

"What do you wish with it?" he asked.

She kissed the violin and then handed it to him. "Here you have it," said she, very softly. "It will never sing so again until you return."

At last the servant announced that dinner was served. They sat down to the executioner meal, the executioner meal for which all his little favorite dishes had been prepared, at which everything was so abundant and so good, only the appetite was lacking.

It was still light when they went to dinner. The light slowly died in the course of the meal. The words fell seldomer and more seldom from Lensky's lips; there was a leaden silence; the brook sobbed without.

Lensky held his wine-glass toward Natalie. "To a happy meeting!" said he; "to a happy meeting!" She repeated, dully: "I will await you here next year when the roses bloom." He pressed her hand; he could not contain himself during the whole meal, but got up before the dessert and began to walk up and down restlessly.

"You have still time," Natalie assured him; "the coffee will come immediately."

"Thanks; is baby asleep? I would like to give her a kiss before I go."

They brought little Maschenka. He kissed and blessed the tiny, rosy child, bundled up in lace and muslin. He has kissed Kolia, loudly crying from excitement, and commissioned him to be brave and not to grieve his mother.

Now he goes up to his wife. They have brought the lamps; he wishes to see her distinctly before he goes. She tries to smile; she raises her arms to stretch them out to him--the arms sink.

"My heart, be reasonable," says he, and draws her to him. A fearful groan comes from her lips; she presses her mouth against his shoulder so as not to scream aloud; her form shook.

He held her to him so tightly that she could scarcely breathe. For one moment he is all hers--it is the last in her life! She knows it! The happiness of her love rallies once more in a feeling of awful, delirious happiness, and dies in a kiss!

Now he has gone! She accompanied him to the house-door. There she now stands and gazes along the street, through the twilight, where he has disappeared between the trees. It did not seem to her that she had parted from a dear man who was about to make a journey. No; as if they had carried a corpse out of the house. It is all over--all! Whatever further comes is only more dry bitterness and inconsolable torment of the heart. She sees his footprints in the half darkness. Why had she not accompanied him to the railway? she asks herself, why--why? From stupid anxiety, from pride of giving the few loafers at the station the sight of her despair had she renounced the pleasure of enjoying his presence until the last moment? She steps outdoors, hurries her steps, wishes to hurry after him, to see him once more, only one moment--then the loud voice of the railroad bell breaks the universal silence--a shrill whistle--it is over! She falls down, buries her face in the cool autumn grass at the edge of the garden path, and sobs as one sobs over a fresh grave.

* * * * * *

About three hours later, Lensky, with his colleagues and Morinsky, sat penned up in a coupé of the first class. The train was over-full, there were eight of them in the small compartment.

In one corner slept Morinsky, his fur collar drawn up over his ears, his head covered with a fez, whose blue tassel waved to and fro over his left ear, which lent his sharp yellow face a diabolical expression.

Opposite him sat an old woman with a copper colored skin, and held a basket of lunch on her knees. At first she had uninterruptedly chewed and smacked her lips, now she snored. She was the mother of a famous staccato singer, who, large and blond, with her head and shoulders prudently wrapped in a red fascinator, embroidered with gold, and painted, and smelling of cosmetics, coquetted with the 'cellist, a very effeminate young man who looked like an actor. They had spread a shawl over their knees, and the diva laid the cards for him, which gave occasion for the most entertaining allusions.

The accompanist of the troupe, a pedantic young pianist, afflicted with a chronic hoarseness, which alone prevented him from becoming a tenor of the first rank, formed the public to the beautiful duet, while he laughed loudly at every particularly poor witticism.

The 'cellist and the diva were very familiar with each other, and both constantly made use of expressions of the commonest kind.

The laughter of the diva became ever shriller, while that of the 'cellist sounded ever deeper from his boots.

Opposite Lensky, the short-armed, fat piano virtuoso of the troupe, a very solid father of a family, who tried to sleep, and from time to time looked round angrily at the disturbers of his rest; and near Lensky, wrapped in furs to the tip of her nose, sat a new prima donna, Signora Zingarelli, of whom Morinsky promised himself the highest success, a beautiful, red-haired Belgian, with long, narrow sphinx eyes. She had tried to enter into conversation with Lensky, but he had turned from her, monosyllabic and coarse.

The train sighed and groaned. Fiery clouds flew by the window in the black night. The close atmosphere in the coupé, the odor of paint, musk, fat meat, hot fur and coal, maddened Lensky; he wished to open one of the windows--the singers protested, Morinsky awoke, settled the dispute:--the window remained closed.

A terrible longing for his love, for his beautiful, poetic home, came over Lensky. He thought of his last night journey, with wife and child, quite alone in a coupé. He saw the charming serpentine lines which the slender, supple figure of his young wife described on the cushions. She slept. Her little head rested on a red silk cushion which she took about with her on all her travels. How tender and delicate her profile stood out from that colored ground! She coughed in her sleep; he stood up to draw the fur mantle which covered her closer up around her shoulders. Drunk with sleep, she opened her eyes and with half unconscious tenderness rubbed her smooth, cool cheeks against her hand. The sweet fragrance of violets which exhaled from her person smote his face. Then--a jolt!--He started up--he must have slept. In any case he had dreamed. His travelling companions all slept now; their heads on their breasts, only the pretty red-haired head of the Zingarelli lay on Lensky's shoulder. She opened her long, narrow eyes, smiled at him--a shrill whistle--the train stopped.

"Amiens!" cried the conductor. "Amiens!" All got out.

While his colleagues plundered the restaurant, Lensky, smoking a cigarette, wandered around the platform alone. The others had all taken their places again, when Morinsky, who had gotten out to look for him, and saw him wandering to another coupé, called after him: "Here, Monsieur Lensky, here!"

But Lensky only stamped his foot impatiently: "Leave me in peace, I am not obliged to make the whole journey in the same cage with your menagerie!" he said.

* * * * * *

Six weeks later not a trace of his homesickness remained. At the artist banquet, which usually followed the concerts, symposiums which began with bad witticisms and ended with an orgy, he was the most unrestrained, the wantonest of all.

He was like one who, suddenly relieved from the pressure of iron fetters, at first, unaccustomed to every free movement, can scarcely move his limbs, but afterward cannot weary of stretching them, and moving them in unlimited freedom.

He broke every bond, indulged every humor. He no longer thought of Natalie and the children, he did not wish to think of them. Remembrance was ashamed to follow him on the way he now went.

It was hard for him to write to his wife, but it was still harder for him to read her letters. And yet she wrote so charmingly, so lovingly! She did not say much of herself, but so much the more of the children, especially of Kolia. With what shining eyes he listened, when she read the reports of the triumphs of his father to him, she wrote, and how he seized every newspaper that he saw, and then asked her: "Is there anything in it about papa?" and how, with his little playmates--she passed the winter with her mother, in Cannes--he boasted importantly of the homage which fell share to his father, and how she did not have the heart to reprove him for it. How he drew ships incessantly, and how she made use of the interest which he took in his father's journey to give him his first lessons in geography, and many other such tender trifles.

These letters vexed him; when he had read them, he despised himself and his surroundings, and for two, three days, remained melancholy and unsociable.

At last he no longer read them, at most only glanced over them, convinced himself hastily that "all was as usual," and then folded them up and laid them aside.

Then came the time when he told himself it was foolish to have such scruples. He was what he always had been, an exceptional man, a Titanic nature. He could not be judged like the others, he could not have exercised his compelling charm over the masses without the fiery violence of his temperament. His success was wonderful. Since they had celebrated the reception of Jenny Lind with discharge of cannon in New York or Boston--history differs as to which, is always careless in relation to prima donnas--no artist had received more homage than Boris Lensky. The women especially seemed as if bewitched by him.

He did not take the situation sentimentally, but rather cynically; still he accustomed himself to the horrible noise of the public, which followed his performances, to the cries of the crowd which accompanied him without, when he left the concert hall, to the illuminated streets in which every window was filled with gazers when he drove home.

When the excitement was once over, a kind of shame overpowered him. What signified these virtuoso triumphs? People always applauded the stupidest piece the loudest. He attained no such effect with a sonata of Beethoven, or Schumann, as with a mad tarentella which he had composed long ago for his wonderful fingers, and of which he was now ashamed.

In Boston, he omitted this tarentella, which had become a nightmare to him, from the programme.

The people remained lukewarm, and so much already did his over-excited nerves desire the shrill storm of applause, that he voluntarily added the trivial and wearying piece of artifice--he, who had formerly so despised his virtuoso triumphs!

* * * * * *

The lilies stand straight and slender, with golden hearts in their deep, white calices, right and left of the door of the little Hermitage, into which Natalie has again moved when the first roses bloom.

It is July. Lensky has fixed his return for the fifteenth. "Afternoon, with the first train that I can catch; but do not worry if I should be late," said his letter.

Not at the station, no, only to the hedge which incloses the park, will Natalie go to meet him.

Kolia quivers with impatience. Natalie counts the hours, draws out her watch--it has stopped. She hurries in the dining-room to consult the clock on the mantel, and discovers Kolia, who, kneeling on a chair, moves the hands.

"What are you doing?" says she, laughing.

The boy sighs impatiently. "I am fixing the clock, mamma. I am sure it must be sick, it goes too slowly to-day."

How she kisses him for it! How pleased she will be to tell Boris of it!

"Hark!"

A shrill sound of a bell, a penetrating whistle; the train has come.

She fetches her little daughter, who has had a charming little white dress put on her, in honor of her father's arrival.

With the little one on her arm, and Kolia at her hand, she steps out under the lindens, which are in full bloom, and throw a sunlit shadowy carpet over the path. Oh, how her poor heart beats! She kisses the tiny hands of her little daughter from excitement, looks scrutinizingly at the little child. Will he think her pretty?

She stands at the hedge of the park, looks out on the street, gazes, waits, sees the people return from the railroad. Now he must come! but no, the white, dusty street is empty; a scornfully whispering breeze blows away the footprints of the last passer-by, a couple of white linden-blossoms fall from the tree-tops--he has not come!

And with slow steps, as one wearily drags himself along after a great disappointment, she turns toward the house. Kolia gives a deep sigh. "I don't understand it, mamma," says he.

"Papa will come with the next train; he has missed this one," his mother consoles him.

For a while he trips silently beside her, then suddenly raising his head and looking at her with his earnest, thoughtful child's eyes, he says:

"We would not have missed the train, would we, mamma?"

And once more the bell sounds in the solemn quiet, and Natalie's heart beats loudly--and he comes not.

Ever sadder, she wanders through the empty rooms, into which the sunlight presses through a shady, cool, perfumed curtain of foliage.

"How can one stay an hour longer than one must in the sultry, dusty, sunny, wearying Paris?" she asks herself.

* * * * * *

Meanwhile Lensky sits with his colleagues in the Trois Frères at a breakfast which began at one o'clock, and now at five o'clock has not yet ended. A breakfast at which all laugh and make jokes--only he broods silently.

He is satiated with this rope-dancer's existence--heartily satiated--he longs for his home, for his dear, incomparable wife, but he delays the moment of meeting as long as he can. A kind of shame contracts his throat at the thought of meeting her eyes. He knows she will ask him no questions, but still----

* * * * * *

Once more the railway bell has in vain startled Natalie and her little son. Evening has come. The excellent little dinner which was prepared in honor of the return has been served and taken away quite untouched. Kolia incessantly pulls his mother's sleeve and asks ever more importunately: "Why does not father come? Why does he not come?"

Maschenka has long been divested of her white muslin finery, and lies in her cradle. Kolia obstinately refuses to go to bed until his father has returned. Weary and tearful he wanders from one corner of the drawing-room to the other and will not play.

Now, with little head on his arm, he has fallen asleep over his picture books at a low child's table.

The roses which Natalie arranged so carefully in the vases wither. The white draperies of her dress are limp and tumbled.

Once again the bell rings. It is the last train to-day. She does not wake Kolia. Why should he uselessly vex himself this time also?

Softly she steps on the porch. The moon stands in the heavens; the trees are black. A gray, transparent mist arises from the earth which obliterates all contours. The flowers smell unusually sweet, and, in luxuriant melancholy, confess so much to the pale, cold moon that they have shamefacedly been silent about to the sun.

Why does the little brook sob so loudly? Can it not be silent a moment? Natalie's whole being is now only a strained, longing listening. Why does her heart beat so loudly? Why does her strong imagination charm up things in the stillness which do not exist? Or--no--no; she hears a sigh, a step, slow, slow! Who can that be? No man walks so slowly who after long, oh, how long absence, returns to wife and child! It is a messenger of misfortune, who delays to announce some ill news to her.

Then, from out the shadow, in the foggy moonlight, comes a broad-shouldered form.

"Boris!" calls Natalie, half to herself. She cannot go to meet him--she cannot. Trembling in her whole body, she stands there, in the carved Gothic portal, against the bright golden background of the lighted hall; stands there in her white dress, between the tall, pale lilies, like an angel before the door of a church, into which a wicked sinner would like to slip.

"Is it you, at last?" she breathes out.

"Yes; I am somewhat late. You know, with one's colleagues, one must offend no one; it is always so."

How rough his voice sounds! How fleetingly, how hastily he kisses her. Is she dreaming?

"How are you; how are the children?" He steps in the hall, blinking uneasily in the light.

Is this really the man to whose coming she has so foolishly, so breathlessly looked forward? This irritable, heavy man with the tumbled clothes, the badly arranged hair, the fearfully altered face, with a new expression of God knows what! Her feet refuse her their service; she catches hold of a support, and sinks down in a chair.

"How pale you are, Natalie!" says he. "Are you ill?"

"No--no--only--I have waited for you since five o'clock. I--I thought you would never find the way back to us."

For an instant he hesitates; then he sinks at her feet, embraces her knees with both arms. He, who at parting had not shed a tear, now, at their meeting, sobs like a desperate one. What pretext, what falsehood can he utter? As if his colleagues could have withheld him if he had only really wished to come home!

"O Natalie! Natalie! Pardon me. We all fear to return to Heaven when we have accustomed ourselves to Earth. Natalie! be good to me; never let me leave you again."

He had plunged a dagger in her heart, but her whole tenderness is awakened.

She bends over him, strokes his rough hair with her tender, white hand. "My poor genius!" she whispers gently. "My poor, dear genius!"

"Papa!" calls a silvery voice, joyfully. "Pa--pa!" he repeats, hesitatingly, frightened. Kolia has run up.

If he lives to be a hundred years old he will never forget how he saw his father sobbing at his mother's feet after the first long separation.

Then he did not understand, but later he understood--understood only too well.

How sad life is: how sad!

* * * * * *

It was the morning after his arrival. Lensky stood at the window of his room, and looked down in the quiet garden. The little brook which tumbled down the hill at the side of the Hermitage with exaggerated violence, quite like a little waterfall, in front of the house from whence Lensky looked down on it, plashed quite calmly, earnestly, and dreamily along its here scarcely susceptibly descending bed, and bore away on its dark waves only as much of the sunshine as could reach it between the lindens. A cool breeze rose from the water, all around was dark green, dewy and luxuriant--luxuriant without the slightest indication of decay, without the least trace of approaching withering.

And what an abundance of roses stood out in gay, blooming colors against the sober, dark-green background! Great Maréchal Niel roses, with heavy, earthward-bent heads, dark-red Jacqueminot, fiery Baroness Rothschild, delicate pink, capriciously crumpled La France. The Gloire de Dijon roses climbed quite in the window of his room in their race with the quite small, pert little running roses.

Light steps crunched the gravel, large and small steps. Natalie stepped out from the shady lindens in front of the house. She held her little daughter in her arms. Kolia walked near her, and with the important earnestness of six years carried a basketful of strawberries, which he had evidently just helped his mother pick. One could think of nothing more charming than the young woman in her white morning-dress, with its lilac ribbons, and the tiny, rosy being in her arms. The little thing was bareheaded, and her little arms and feet were also bare. She quivered and danced with animation. There she discovered a butterfly, cried out gayly, and clapped her little hands.

"Oh, are you ready so soon?" called Natalie, when she saw her husband at the window. "Come to breakfast; I have had the table laid in the garden."

He hurried down. The breakfast-table stood in a shady spot, over which the blooming lindens reached their branches.

Oh, what a table! How very pretty the Rouen service made it! a service whose old-fashioned gayness combined harmoniously the most incongruous colors, set out on the dazzling white damask table-cloth. How inviting and appetizing everything was! These curiously shaped dishes, with their fragrant burden of still warm golden cakes and rolls of pale yellow butter between glittering pieces of ice, and ham covered with transparent aspic! Around the greenish twilight, fragrant, cool, only here and there the reddish glimmer of a sunbeam curiously wandered into the shadow, and now held captive by the lindens.

When she saw her father coming, little Mascha became quite unruly, almost danced out of her mother's arms, and, without resisting, let herself be taken, hugged, and kissed by him. While he held her in his arms, Kolia seized her little bare legs, and pressed his mouth to her tiny pink feet.

"She is charming, a beauty! Is that really my daughter, can something so wonderfully pretty have such an ugly man for father?" he said from time to time, laughingly, tenderly, while he kissed her bare shoulders, and especially the dimple in her neck, again and again.

"She looks very like you, your pretty daughter," jested Natalie. "More than the boy! It vexes him if I say that, and I also would prefer it to be the other way."

Lensky laughed somewhat constrainedly. The nurse came up to get baby.

"Just a moment," said Lensky, swinging the little thing high in the air, to its great delight, "so--and one more kiss on the eyes, the neck, on these dear, sweet little hands, so----"

The nurse already had the little thing in her arms, when the sweet little rogue looked round at her father.

Meanwhile, Natalie busied herself with the samovar, which stood on a small stand near the breakfast table. No servant was near, Kolia helped mamma serve tea, and waited with a sober expression until his mother had confided the cup for his father to him. Carefully, as if he held the Holy Grail in his hands, he carried it over to Lensky. Natalie sat down opposite her husband, and buttered him a piece of bread.

He looked at her with a peculiarly sad, touched look. "You are all much too good to me," he murmured; then he added, tenderly: "Either I had really forgotten during my absence how beautiful you are, or you have really gained in charm."

How awkwardly that came out! how stumblingly! He had wished to say something loving to her, but he had not succeeded well. He felt it himself. A petulant smile shone in her sad eyes at his well, or much rather, badly put little speech. Some reply trembled on her lips, then she suddenly closed her lovely mouth, as if she feared her husband would take what she wished to say somewhat ill, and busied herself in fastening a napkin round Kolia's neck.

After a while Lensky began anew: "How charming my home is. Ah, Natalie, how have I renounced it all for so long! How could I exist so long without you!"

"If you only are really pleased over your return we will make no further remarks about your absence," said Natalie very lovingly, and then hesitated with embarrassment and blushed to the roots of her hair.

Breakfast took its course. Here and there, by turns, Natalie and Lensky made a remark, but the conversation did not become fluent. A strange irritation vibrated in every nerve of the virtuoso. Formerly there had been no end of talking between them, and now-- What was she thinking of, to speak about the weather as if he were any guest to whom one feels obliged to be polite, and to whom one does not know what to say, because no common interest unites him with us?

He remembered the words which she had spoken in the Hotel Windsor at that time before the conclusion of his contract with Morinsky: "As a stranger you will return to us, and a stranger you will remain among us from that time."

Was she right? Foolishness! She had only become a little too distinguished among the wearisome crowd with whom she had passed the winter. The forced mood which reigned between them was her fault, not his.

"You are so stiff and formal, Natalie," he remarked at last, vexedly, quite irrelevantly. "You have again accustomed yourself to such fearfully aristocratic manners."

"How can you say anything so foolish?" she answered him, laughing constrainedly.

"Oh, it is not laughable to me," he growled, and suddenly, without any reason, only to air his inward uneasiness, he burst out: "It is painful to me, I cannot endure it--cannot bear it." He pushed his cup away with an involuntary motion.

"But, Boris!" Natalie admonished him. "My poor, unaccountable, dear genius!" She looked at him so roguishly therewith that his anger was scattered to the four winds.

He stretched out both his hands to her across the table; she took them. He bent somewhat forward, wished to draw her hands to his lips, when a light step was heard on the gravel. Natalie blushed, and with a quick, almost frightened movement, drew them away from him. He scowled angrily. Before whom was she embarrassed then?

A young woman in a very elegant negligé costume, profusely trimmed with Valenciennes lace, without hat, and a yellow parasol in her hand, stepped up to the breakfast table. She resembled Natalie, although she was smaller, stouter, and the features of her pretty face were coarser. Lensky recognized in her his wife's sister, Princess Jeliagin, a person whom he detested from the bottom of his heart, even if he had until now only known her slightly, before his marriage with Natalie. Kind friends had told him that she had described his alliance with her sister as une chose absurde. Wife of a rich, quite incompetent diplomat, she had during her ten years' life in foreign countries made all the most absurd aristocratic prejudices her own, and was always addressed as "Princess," although her husband had no title. With all these Western-Europe grimaces she combined something of her Russian, half Asiatic exaggeration, by which she became still more grotesque and tactless. In spite of her boasted exclusiveness she had never quite learned to understand the shades of foreign society, and made frequent mistakes in her choice of acquaintances.

Besides this, with all her weaknesses and affectations, she was good natured to silliness, and hospitable to prodigality.

"So early in the morning, Barbe what a surprise!" Natalie called to her, while she tried not to let it be perceived how inopportune her sister's visit was to her just at that moment. "That is charming, I must introduce my husband to you."

"We know each other already, at least I hope that Boris Nikolaivitch remembers me--once in St. Petersburg, at the Olins. In any case, I am very happy to renew the acquaintance," remarked the Jeliagin, and at once reached him her fat little hand, in a buckskin garden glove. Her voice was guttural and rough, her whole face, as Lensky could now see plainly, was painted.

"How are you, Nikolas?" She turned to little Kolia, while she stroked his head in a friendly manner. "Please greet a person, or have I fallen as deeply in your displeasure as my Anna? I assure you that I cannot help it if she talks foolishly. Only think, Boris Nikolaivitch, he cudgelled my daughter Anna, day before yesterday, because she ventured to assert that a prince was greater than a genius. He answered her that not even an emperor was greater. A genius came next to the dear God, and as she would not agree to that, he struck her, and hard."

The Jeliagin laughed. Lensky also laughed involuntarily, but remarked in a tone of admonition to his son, who had shyly concealed himself behind his mother: "A boy should never strike a girl; that is not proper."

"But why did she say such foolish things?" little Nikolas defended himself, while he wrinkled his small forehead. "I cannot bear that, and then she is larger than I, so much"--he measured the width of his hand above his head.

"She gave him quite a scratch, she was not defenceless," said Barbara Alexandrovna, while she sat down and closed her umbrella. "But to come to something more interesting," she continued; "we have, in spirit, followed you on every step of your American triumphal march, Boris Nikolaivitch; the newspapers gave us the guide thereto. I hope we will now see very much of you. Natascha can tell you how well all artists are received at our house,--and h'm!--and if it is a question of a relation--à propos, could you not come and dine with us this evening? We are quite entre nous, only Lis, Princess Zriny, that eccentric Hungarian, Marinia Löwenskiold, a good friend of yours, you remember her, a few diplomats, etc.; and we are bored as only gens du monde are bored if they have been together under the same roof for ten days. Natalie can tell you how bored we are--merely people from our coterie, who know each other by heart; if you please. And how stupid we are! ha, ha, ha! In desperation we arranged a race in the drawing-room yesterday. Arthur de Blincourt, while jumping a barrier, dislocated a joint, and now lies on a lounge, and lets himself be looked after. But we all long for a new element--on vous attend comme le Messie, Boris Nikolaivitch. You will come, will you not? We dine at eight o'clock."

While she chattered on with self-satisfied fluency, it seemed to Boris as if some one scratched a knife on a porcelain plate.

"Why does she roll her eyes so incessantly when she speaks? They do not look more beautiful when one sees so much of their orange-yellow whites," he thought to himself. Aloud he only remarked: "Do you really believe that I would amuse you better than a drawing-room race?"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed she. "That is splendid! I must repeat it to Marinia Löwenskiold, who raves about you. You will come, will you not?"

"No, I will not come," replied he sharply. "I do not feel myself equal to the task of amusing a dozen gens du monde who are bored."

"Well, as you will," said the Jeliagin, shrugging her shoulders. "Try to persuade him before evening, Natalie, and come, or send me word. I must go, we wish to ride out en bande, at eight. Adieu! Give me your hand, please, Kolia, and come and lunch with us. Anna will be pleased, and you shall have strawberries and whipped cream. Adieu!" With that she went away.

Lensky stared gloomily before him for a while, then he struck his clenched fist on the table so that all the dishes rattled: "From whence did this goose drop down so suddenly?" asked he.

"She lives in the castle in the park," said Natalie. "She has hired it for the summer."

"So!" grumbled Lensky. "Now if I had known that, I should never have thought of coming here."

"But I wrote you of it."

"Not a word."

"Certainly, in many letters; did you not have time to read them?"

Instead of replying to this, for him very unpleasant remark, Lensky said, in increasing rage: "Oh! now I understand the change which has taken place in you. She is horrible, your sister! For what does she hold me, that she takes this tone with me?"

"I cannot help her lack of tact," replied Natalie, gently and reproachfully.

"Ah, you are still influenced by your relations, by that narrow stupid crowd," he growled, crimson with rage. "You are condescending to me, yes, that is the right word, condescending, indulgent. Why do you start back from me when this silly machine comes near? Are you then ashamed of our love before her?"

"Our love!" repeated Natalie, with broken voice, strangely emphasizing the word "our."

He did not suspect anything from the trembling sadness of her voice, and did not once look at her.

Meanwhile he felt the anxious touch of a silky, soft child's hand. Little Kolia had come up to his father, and whispered to him shyly and pleadingly: "Papa, mamma is crying."

Lensky looked up, frightened. Yes, she had done her utmost to courageously smile through the unpleasant scene, but her overexcited nerves could not bear it; she sobbed convulsively.

"But Natalie, my angel, my little dove!" He could not see any woman weep, least of all his wife, whom he loved. He sprang up, took her in his arms, covered her eyes, her mouth, her whole face with kisses. "Do not torment yourself, my treasure! You are much, much too good to me; you are an angel! How could you ever take such a rough clown as I am? We are not suited to each other, Natascha."

"Oh, Boris! do you mean that?"

"Yes, I mean it," said he, gloomily. "Better, a hundred times better, would it have been for you if you had never seen me! You are so charming, so good, and I love you so idolatrously; but I am a fearful, a horrible man, and I cannot always govern myself--I cannot! I will yet torment you to death, my poor Natalie!" And he did not cease to caress and to kiss her.

Then she raised her head from his shoulder, and looking at him from eyes still shining with tears, with a glance full of tender fanaticism she said: "What does it matter, even if you kill me? it would still be beautiful! I would change with no woman in God's world, do you hear, with none! Think of what I have said to you to-day when one day you give me a last kiss in my coffin!"

* * * * * *

Lensky could no longer get back into the old ways at home; however much he tried, he could not. As in the former year, only more significantly, more tormentingly, the feeling of growing discontent made itself felt in him. It seemed to him as if he could not remain for any length of time on the same spot; as if he must incessantly seek something which was no longer anywhere to be found.

For a couple of days he ill-humoredly stayed away from the castle, but when his brother-in-law paid him a visit and repeated the invitation of Barbara Alexandrovna in the most polite manner,--when one day, all the ladies staying at the castle as guests had come out in a body to give him an ovation and especially when he had become immeasurably weary of the poetic monotony of life in the Hermitage; he replied to Natalie, when she once asked him smilingly, with the intention of freeing him from his own constraining obstinacy, whether he thought it was really worth the trouble to longer play the bear: "No!"

From that time, he passed every evening in the castle.

At first Natalie had been glad that the social intercourse there offered him a distraction. But soon the evenings in "Les Ormes" became a torment to her. The hateful change which had taken place in him during his long absence from his family, that change which Natalie had predicted, and by which she yet had been frightened at his return, as by something quite unexpected, never became more significant than during these evenings at the castle.

If, during the first years of his marriage, through the lovely influence of his young wife, and especially through the wish to satisfy, to please her in everything, he had learned with quite incredible rapidity to follow the usual social customs of the country, and no longer to bear himself in the world as a genius, but as any other cultivated, well-bred man, he had completely forgotten it during his vagabond life, or rather it had become wearisome to him.

More than ever, his circle of action in a drawing-room limited itself to producing music and then being raved over by ladies. The incessant self-bewilderment in this smoke of incense how, where and whenever it might be, had become a necessity of existence for him. Everything in him had gone wild, even his art.

Together with a preference for perilous technical artifices, challenging musical unrestraint of every kind showed itself. Oftener than ever he fell into those mad moods in which he demanded things of his poor violin which it could not perform, until it groaned and screamed as if in the torments of hell, and if he had formerly complained that he could not govern himself, he now boasted of it. It was his specialty, by which he was distinguished from all the virtuosos of his time. And, in spite of all the underlying lack of restraint and the impurity, that the sense-enslaving glow of his art now unfolded stronger than before, there could be no doubt. Especially over the feminine portion of his listeners his playing exercised a quite degrading charm. The triumphs which he achieved in "Les Ormes" proved this.

He profited by the situation. Although it would have been tiresome to him to have passed a whole evening among these people of the world, far removed from all his most intimate interests of life, without playing, he sometimes let himself be urged almost to lack of taste before he took up his violin. It happened once that he waited until a particularly crazy enthusiast presented, kneeling, his violin to him.

One of the musical ladies present sat down to the piano to accompany him; the others grouped themselves as near as possible round him, while they anxiously tried to express by their positions a kind of dying-away charm. He felt the longing glances of their eyes resting on him while he played. He saw the beautiful heads bent forward. It went to his head like a stunning oppression; he no longer knew himself. But they no longer knew themselves. If in the bearing of the great ladies who frequented his house in ----, in spite of all their enthusiasm for his art, there had still been a trace of patronage with reference to the artist, many of these beauties now fawned upon him like slaves who would sue for his favor.

When he had finished, no one of them knew by what special insanity she should over-trump the others, in order to prove to him her enthusiasm. And while the music-bewitched women crowded around him, to beg autographs or locks of hair from him, and carefully picked out the remains of his thrown-away cigarettes from the ash receiver, in order to keep them as relics, the Jeliagin told some new guest, in an adjoining room, the "romance of her sister," which she always concluded with the words: "My poor sister; so courted as she was! You know that she refused Prince Truhetzkoi. We were inconsolable when we heard of her betrothal with Lensky. He is really a great genius!" And then she sighed.

But Natalie stood on the terrace which opened out of the music-room, quite alone. She was happy if she could remain alone; if no one came up to her to ask if she had a headache, or if anything else was the matter. Was anything the matter with her? No one could feel what she suffered, and there was also no human consolation which she would not have felt as an insult, however tenderly it was offered to her.

What were the little pin pricks which had excited her impatience in ---- to this pain!

Around her was the summer night, sultry and still. The black shadows of the trees stretched themselves in the moonlight over the gray-green turf on which not a single dew-drop sparkled.

Out into the stillness of the night sounded a loud, harsh laugh. Natalie looked through one of the flower-encircled windows into the drawing-room. There sat Lensky in a circle of ladies.

Heated by his wearying performance, he wiped the perspiration from his temples, from his neck. He was relating something that Natalie could not hear distinctly, but which evidently seemed very droll to him, and which convulsed his listeners; they exhibited a kind of comically exaggerated irritation. An embarrassed smile appeared on his lips, he seized the hand of the lady who sat nearest to him, played with it appeasingly, and drew it to his lips. This was his manner of making his apologies if he had said something too racy.

Natalie stepped back in the shadow. A desperation, which was mingled with aversion, lay hold of her. Then, hollow, paining, quenching all the pleasure of life, quite like a physical discomfort, something crept over her which she would not explain to herself, which at no price would she have called by its name--jealousy.

* * * * * *

The whole mud of his inner nature was stirred up as a stream highly swollen and unsettled after a wild storm, raving and foaming, tumbles in its bed, and can no longer find peace and rest therein.

From time to time he invited guests from Paris; sometimes they came uninvited. They usually remained to luncheon only, but Natalie had always time enough to be alarmed at them and to wish them away. They were no longer artistic celebrities like those whom Natalie had charmed to the "Hermitage" the year before; no, Lensky had reached that point in his career when an artist only tolerates courtiers and court fools about himself.

What a motley rabble that sometimes was which assembled around him--artistic Bohemians, freed from all social and moral restraint!

The men usually remained to luncheon. Natalie did her utmost to conceal the repulsion which the bearing and manner of expression of the throng caused her, even from her husband. But sharp-sighted as he was he guessed her feelings.

At first he tried to spare her; to keep the conversation in suitable bounds as long as she was present. But one day it became too tiresome for him. Whether the wine had gone to his head, or whether some secret vexation irritated him, in any case he felt the need of breaking his conventional shackles. Scarcely had he given the sign for excessive freedom of speech, when the other men followed his lead. They laughed, jested with Natalie and about her, without the slightest consideration for her, as men heated by wine do when they are together--Lensky by far the worst among them all.

From time to time he looked at Natalie challengingly and angrily. Why was she so prudish? Why was she so affected? It was laughable in a married woman of her age--was nothing but foolishness and affectation.

At dessert she could bear it no longer; she left the table and locked herself in her room.

A kind of illness had come over her; she was near a swoon.

How painful the recollection of his roughness was to him later she knew nothing of. He was much too proud to let it be noticed. On the contrary, when he was with her again he acted as if he had a humor of hers to pardon.

From that time Natalie no longer appeared at these lunches. But in the distance she heard the rattling of glasses, the laughter.

She stopped her ears and bit her teeth into her lips.

* * * * * *

With all this he became daily more out of temper and discontented.

At first his drawing-room triumphs in "Les Ormes" had amused him; gradually he lost the taste for them, found everything empty childish. His position in the midst of this exclusive worldliness vexed him. While the women threw themselves at his head, he noticed a smile on the lips of the men which offended him. If, even at the beginning of his career, he had felt quite à son aise with the ladies of the aristocracy, he never, on the contrary, to the end of his life, learned to live in harmony with the men of that rank. Their treatment of him always remained objectionable to him. True, they always met him with the greatest politeness, but they never treated him as their equal, and were always a trifle too polite to him. If he entered the smoking-room while they, with hands in their pockets and cigars between their teeth, confidentially talked of politics, race-horses or ladies, the conversation immediately took a more earnest tone. As soon as he opened his mouth the others all listened in solemn silence; then one of them would leave the group, take him apart from the others, and try to talk of music with him. He embarrassed them and they embarrassed him.

Formerly, he had taken such things quite philosophically, but his sensitiveness had increased in recent times. In the long months which he had passed, going from city to city, winning triumphs and absolute, surrounded only by artists of the second and third class, he had gradually begun to feel himself the central point of the world. But here, in spite of the insane homage of the ladies, he very soon saw what a small rôle he really played on the world's stage, although he could give pleasure to so many by his art.

He could still tolerate the Russians, but sometimes strange diplomats came to the castle. The condescending flattery of these gentlemen was unbearable to him. What was he really in the eyes of these empty heads? he asked himself; an acrobat of the better sort, a man who existed merely for their accursed amusement. As if music were not the most beautiful of all arts, an art ten times holier, more God-like than the political, bungling work of these diplomats! "Art is the most enduring in the world. I am the only immortal among you all!" he said to himself. But then came the question: "Yes; am I then immortal? What have I accomplished up to this time to deserve artistic immortality?"

He only felt really happy on the days when all the men were occupied in hunting, and he and a handsome Spanish painter with a wooden leg were the only men in a circle of ten or twelve ladies, although, in his heart, the unmanliness of his position struck him bitterly enough.

* * * * * *

The most charming of his admirers in "Les Ormes," the one who had decidedly taken the first place in his favor, was the Countess Marinia Löwenskiold. As already mentioned, she was a Pole, and married to a northern diplomat, from whom she lived separated, à l'aimable.

Naturally, she was an idealist, as almost all women are who have departed from the usual course in life. In addition, she was very musical. What was most piquant about her was the fact that, in spite of the separation from her husband, whom, besides, no one could bear, and in spite of her perilous coquetries, no one could say anything against her which could seriously injure her reputation.

Perhaps it was just this, her former haughty blamelessness, which attracted Lensky to her. She was very beautiful, she pleased him; and then--why did they say that this little Pole was invincible? He would see!

Among the guests in the castle was Count Leon Pachotin. Touchingly faithful to his old enthusiasm, he busied himself by singling out the wife of the virtuoso on every possible occasion, with the most exaggerated homage and attentions. He was still a very handsome man, was rich, had changed his military career, as is quite customary with young cavaliers, for that of diplomacy, in all appearances bid fair to reach the highest honors, and--was still unmarried. It was indescribably bitter to Natalie to play the humiliating rôle which had fallen to her in life, so near to him. Sometimes she felt his kind blue eyes resting upon her in sad compassion. Then the proud blood boiled within her. She collected herself in order that nothing might be noticed, and was again, so truly the charming, seductive, unapproachable Natalie Assanow of former days.

* * * * * *

On a sultry evening, toward the middle of August, the company in the castle was unusually brilliant and numerous. The men and women sat in groups here and there in an immense pavilion--in which, by means of screens and thickets of flowers, all kinds of confidential nooks were formed--talked, laughed, coquetted, and sipped the refreshments which tall servants with solemn bearing and brilliant liveries presented.

Natalie had the consciousness this evening of looking particularly beautiful. Pechotin scarcely left her side. She observed that the count's manner to her irritated Lensky, that he looked over to her more than once uneasily, and she was glad and doubled her lovability to Pachotin.

Then she noticed that Boris had left the pavilion. With instinctive jealousy her eyes sought Countess Löwenskiold. She also was missing. Natalie's blood throbbed in every vein, she suddenly found Pachotin intrusive and awkward, wished to do nothing more speedily than to get rid of him.

"Please see if you can get me an ice, Count," she remarked. He rose obligingly. Scarcely had he left her when she stepped out from the pavilion on the terrace.

There was no one there, but out in the park, not very far, no further than a lady should permit herself to wander in the garden on a beautiful summer night in the company of a gentleman, she discovered two figures--he and she. A quite irresistible impulse drove her to follow them, to interrupt their conversation in some manner. Already she had taken a step forward, then, blushing for herself, she remained standing. Had it already gone so far with her that she should show herself capable of a degrading, pitiful act! She stood as if rooted to the ground. The pair in the park, yonder, also remained standing. She saw how Lensky stamped his foot, and threw back his brown head. She knew this despotic, violent movement. Then it seemed to her that she heard the words: "pas de sens commun--enfantillages!" Her heart beat violently, she turned away and reëntered the room. Soon after, Lensky joined the other guests, so did the Countess Löwenskiold. It did not escape Natalie that the latter entered the room by another door from him. The Polish woman was deathly pale, and her lips burned with fever. In Lensky's manner, on the contrary, not a trace of excitement betrayed itself; he was even more lovable than usual, and polite to all the ladies, and without being specially urged, took up his violin.

While he played, he turned away from the Löwenskiold, and he charmed such tones from his Amati that evening, tones of such touching, painful sweetness, that the most earnest men present, with the women, bowed before his art.

While he played, the nervous countess was seized with a fit of weeping, and left the room.

A little later, Natalie and Lensky walked home together through the park. The way which they took was enclosed on both sides by thick bushes, which almost met over their heads in a transparent arch. The moonbeams slid through the branches, and the shadows of the leaves spread themselves out like ghostly lace-work over the yellow gravel. An oppressive sultriness, the breathless, sticky sultriness of the old heat of the day, which remained hanging in the thicket, made breathing difficult.

Neither of them spoke a word. But while she, holding her head very high in the air, looked straight before her, his glance rested ever more frequently on her. In accordance with the custom which ruled in the castle, she wore evening dress, and, on account of the heat, had let the white, gold-embroidered burnous slip down a little from her bare shoulders. The moonlight shone on her neck. She held her little head somewhat averted. In vain he tried to look in her eyes; he only saw the outline of her cheek, her chin, and neck; but how charming all that was! Never before, since his return, had she pleased him so. It really was worth the pains to only look at another woman near this one. Giving way to a sudden excitement, mingled with remorse, he drew her to him and pressed his lips to her shoulder. But she escaped his embrace, not without a certain correcting roughness. His arms fell loosely at his sides, but he could not remove his gaze from her. How high she held her head, what annihilating arrogance her little mouth expressed! In his mind he saw Pachotin bent over her chair, humbly intent on the slightest sign of her favor.

Who knows? perhaps she regrets, thought he to himself, and a furious rage gnawed at his heart.

* * * * * *

About three days after this scene--three days, during which Natalie and Lensky had lived together in mutual wrath, without speaking a word to each other, Lensky told his wife he must to-day go to Paris, in order to arrange with Flaxland the publication of one of his works; at the same time he wished to make use of the opportunity to see and hear Gounod's new opera. He could, therefore, only come home the next day on the five o'clock train. He said all that in a very grumbling tone, did not give her a kiss for farewell, and immediately went to the railroad.

She fancied him already far away, when he returned again. "Have you forgotten anything?" she asked him.

"Yes; namely, I would like to know if you perhaps have anything to be done in Paris--and then--if you wish, you can come with me; we will go to the opera together. I will wait, as far as I am concerned, for the next train, so that there will be time enough for you to make ready."

If he had only said that pleasantly, but he said it roughly, disagreeably, as if it did not concern him at all. He had offended Natalie too much recently for her to agree with his first attempt at reconciliation.

"I thank you very much," she replied coldly; "you will amuse yourself much better without me."

For one moment he hesitated; then he shrugged his shoulders and went.

Scarcely had he gone when Natalie was overcome with remorse for her stubbornness and obstinacy.

Truly it was unwise and hateful not to come to meet him, if he, proud as he was, took the first step. She could have cried from anger with herself. A true child, as in the bottom of her heart she still was, she could not cease to think of the pleasure which she so petulantly had renounced. How charming it would have been to pass a whole day alone with him in Paris. To dine in the Café Anglais, very quickly and quite early, so as not to miss the opera, but still very excellently; she even made out the menu--ah! she knew all his favorite dishes so well; then the next day they would have bought all kinds of useless, pretty things together. She knew, from former years, how good-naturedly and patiently he would let himself be dragged in the great bazaars. She would have bought Kolia playthings and baby an embroidered dress--she saw the little dress before her--and instead of all that--ah, how vexatious!

The hours dragged slowly; she scarcely put her foot out of the house. She also remained at home in the evening; the castle had really no power of attraction for her. When Kolia took the place opposite her at dinner, and unfolded his napkin with an important air, he remarked: "See, mamma, now it is just like the day after papa had gone away to America, only you are not so sad, because you know that he is coming back soon."

Natalie smiled at the child. After awhile Kolia began anew:

"Mamma, shall we go to meet papa tomorrow?"

She nodded.

Kolia rested his little head thoughtfully on his hand.

"I wonder if he will miss the train again?" said he.

* * * * * *

In accordance with a loving agreement, Natalie had formerly been the only one who possessed the right to move anything in Lensky's sanctum, and to remove the dust from his writing-table. With devoted punctuality she had always performed this task. Only very recently had she been untrue to this dear custom. But this time he should observe, as soon as he returned, that she had busied herself for him during his absence.

She was in an optimistic frame of mind. She would no longer be angry with him because he of late had caused her so many bitter hours. He himself had not been happy. He was not yet really acclimatized at home. She had known that she must first win him back again after his long absence. Why had she from exaggerated pride so soon crossed arms? To remember the low expressions which he sometimes now made use of, and especially in company with the motley crowd that came over to him from Paris, this really sent the blood to her cheeks--but still he had scarcely known what he said. She had needlessly irritated him by her childish prudery; one must take these great natures, always inclined to exaggeration, as they were, and not make them obstinate by quite uselessly checking and restraining them.

Only at the thought of the Countess Löwenskiold an unpleasant shudder ran over her. And suddenly the thought flashed through her: "What does he really wish in Paris?" But almost laughingly she answered herself: "As if he could wish anything evil when he asked me to accompany him!"

After she had carefully and daintily set everything to rights on the writing-table, she went down in the garden to cut for it the most beautiful roses which she could find.

Softly humming one of the songs which he had dedicated to her as bride, she carried the flowers, tastefully arranged in a vase, into his room, and placed them on his writing-table. There she discovered in a brass ash receiver a half-burned paper which had formerly escaped her. She looked at the paper to see whether she might throw it away. Her heart stood still. She read the words written in French: "O thou my creator, my redeemer--my ruiner--broken--Paris." The rest of the lines were burned.

She could scarcely stand. From whom were these lines? was not that the writing of Countess Löwenskiold? No, no, it was not possible--he asked me to accompany him. Yes, he asked me to accompany him. She repeated it ten times, a hundred times, in order to shake off from herself the conviction that began so pitilessly to weigh down upon her. She could not believe such a thing, she would not. Countess Löwenskiold had certainly not left "Les Ormes"!

But, however she fights with her distrust, she cannot overcome it. A thousand little particulars occur to her.

The sun shines down hot and full from the sapphire-blue heaven. Natalie does not trouble herself about that; straight through the park she hurries, without parasol, without hat, over to the castle. She will inform herself with as little risk as possible. There is no one at home; the ladies have not yet returned from a walk. What a shame! "La princesse regrettera beaucoup," remarked the maître d'hôtel, who had received her in the entrance-hall. "Perhaps madame will remain to lunch; they will lay a place for madame."

He is an old acquaintance, a servant whom Natalie has known for years. "Oh, no; I cannot stay; I only wished to inquire after the health of the Countess Löwenskiold; she has looked so miserable of late," murmured she.

"Madame la Comtesse Löwenskiold?" says the man, astonished. "Ah! she is no longer here. The poor countess left day before yesterday evening, quite unexpectedly. It occurred to me that she looked very badly. Did madame also notice it?"

What she stammered in answer to his question she does not know. A few minutes later she hurries homeward again through the park, hatless, parasolless. The sun still beams down full and golden upon the earth from the sapphire sky. She does not feel the burning of the sun, and does not see that the sky is blue. For her the sun is dead and the sky black. It seems to her that it sinks slowly down upon her, heavy and breath-robbing, like a sultry, bruising weight.

"He wished to take me with him," she still repeats, as if the words held consolation; "yes, he wished to take me with him." Then she remembers the embarrassed, uneasy expression which his face wore when he returned at the last minute to ask her to accompany him. Evidently he had had a fit of remorse.

"I could have prevented it," she murmured, with hollow voice. Then she shook in her whole body with rage and horror.

* * * * * *

About this time, gloomily looking before him, Lensky went through the Rue de la Paix. He did not know why he went along this street rather than another. It was quite indifferent to him where he was; he only wished to kill time. A furious anger with himself shook him; at the same time disgust tormented him. It was always the same; one woman was just like the others. The only one who was different was his own wife; and he--well, he had taken the first slight opportunity to insult her.

He came by the hotel in which he had lived with her the former year. He hastened his steps. From a jeweller's shop the most wonderful jewels sparkled at him. He entered. He would take something to Natalie; would give her a little pleasure. He purchased a pretty pin set with emeralds. She had a preference for emeralds. Scarcely had he left the shop when it seemed to him that the little case in his pocket weighed upon him, pulled him down to the ground. How had he dared venture to offer her a gift in this moment! He took the little case and threw it on the ground--trod on it, once, twice, raging, beside himself. So! that did him good. He must vent his wrath in some way.

* * * * * *

When he returned home about five o'clock, he was calmer. What had happened could not be changed, it was now only worth while not to ruin the future. It disquieted him that Natalie did not meet him, but after all, he was not very astonished. She still felt a little vexed with him. He would soon make an end of that. He asked where she was. "In her room," they told him. But what was that? Everything was upturned, chests stood open, on chairs and tables lay piles of linen, clothes, as before a departure. He did not yet understand, but still he noticed that she started violently at his entrance, without looking around at him.

"What are you doing, Natalie? Are you preparing for departure?" asked he.

"As you see," replied she shortly, and continued her strange occupation.

"It is a good idea," said he. "I already myself wished to make the proposition to you to move away from here. But how did you really come to think of it?"

Instead of any answer, she merely shrugged her shoulders. A short pause followed.

He stepped somewhat nearer to her. "Natalie," said he, earnestly, warmly and gently, with his old, dear voice, the voice which always went so deep to her heart, and which she now heard again for the first time since his return from America, "Natalie, do you not think that we would do better to make peace with each other?"

He wished to put his arm round her, but she repulsed him. In so doing, for the first time she turned her face to him. With horror he perceived how miserable she looked.

Her lips were pale, her features sharpened like a dead person's. For one moment she still restrained herself, her eyes sought his. An unrest, a hope fevered in her. "Perhaps I have in vain martyred and tormented myself," she said to herself. "He certainly could not speak so to me, if----"

With trembling hand she opened a little box, and took out the half-singed letter which she had not been able to overcome herself from carrying about with her. She handed Lensky the letter.

He changed color. "What accident has played this silly note into your hands?" he burst out.

"No matter about that," she replied dully, and with that she tottered so that she must catch hold of a chair so as not to fall. "Were you--in company--with the Löwenskiold--in Paris--or--not?"

Why could he not lie? He remained silent.

Once more she looked at him, despairingly and supplicatingly. He turned away his head.

She gave a gasping cry, pushed back the hair from her temples with both hands, and sank in a chair. Then she pointed with her pale, trembling hand to the door.

Lensky did not move.

"Go!" said she, severely; and her hand no longer trembled, and her gesture was more imperious, more proud.

Instead of obeying her command, he sank down at her feet and covered the hem of her dress with kisses. "I have sinned against you," he said; "yes, but if you knew how furious I am with myself, and how little my heart was concerned in the affair, you would pardon me. You will not certainly be jealous of something that is quite beneath one's notice; one does not always think immediately what one is doing." He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "For this reason you are still the only woman in the world for me. Really, my angel, it is not worth the pains that you should torment yourself!" He took her hand in his.

But she started back from his touch. "Leave me!" said she, violently. "All is at an end between us--go!"

For the first time he comprehended the gravity of the situation. "All at an end--" he murmured, while he rose. "What do you mean?"

"That I will no longer bear to be under the same roof with you; that I will go back to my mother; that I insist upon a separation--that is what I mean. Did you, then, expect anything different?"

He clutched his forehead. "A separation! but that is impossible!" he gasped. "A separation--the children!"

She started. "Yes--the children!" murmured she, dully, inconsolably; "the children!" And with a bitter smile she looked down on her preparations for the journey, on the trunks, the effects lying about.

Then he once more stepped up to her. "You see that the bond between us can never more be broken," said he, gently. "You cannot go!"

"No!" said she harshly. "No, I cannot go--not even that consolation remains to me. As the mother of your children I must remain under your roof. But in everything else between me and you all is at an end. Go!"

He went.

* * * * * *

He betook himself to his study. Scarcely had he entered here when a peculiar feeling of mingled emotion and anxiety came over him. He noticed that she had been here, noticed that she had everywhere removed the dust; that she had arranged his of late neglected writing-table, and how understandingly, with what loving consideration of all his whims! He noticed the vase with fresh roses. Evidently she had busied herself for him during his absence. She had wished to be reconciled to him, and while she troubled herself for him she must have found the note somewhere in this room. "It is all over," he told himself; "but that is really not possible. It is jealousy that speaks from her; that will pass away." Jealousy! Yes, if it had really only been jealousy, but that which he had read in her features was something else--almost a kind of loathing. What, then, had he done? He had left a distinguished young woman, beautiful as a picture, alone for eight months, and when he returned, instead of recompensing her for her long, sad loneliness by loving consideration, he had daily, before her eyes, let himself be raved over by other women, and at last----

"She despises me, and she is right!" he murmured to himself. "If she had borne this also, she would have been pitiable, and I must have despised her like the others--she, my proud, splendid Natalie!"

He sat at his writing-table, and rested his head in his hand.

The twilight shadows spread over the floor, and slid down from the ceiling, and made the corners of the room invisible, and obliterated the outlines of the furniture. The colors died; only the white roses shone in a ghostly manner in the half light.

Then the door opened; the servant announced that dinner was served.

It seemed strange to him that he should go to the table to-day as any other day; it was not possible for him to eat anything, but he was ashamed to cause talk among the servants, and so he went into the dining-room. "Will she be there?" he asked himself. How could he have even fancied such a thing? Naturally she was missing. Only Kolia was there, and stood expectantly near the silver soup tureen, which shone on the table. In their little family circle, Lensky always himself served the soup. Kolia had raised himself on tiptoes, and with one slender finger had pushed the cover of the dish somewhat to one side. He stretched his little nose eagerly forward, and slowly inhaled the rising odor, while with a deliciously old, wise connoisseur expression he drew down his nostrils and closed his eyes.

"I see already, it is crab soup--my favorite soup, papa!" he remarked, and then with agility he climbed up on the chair, which, on account of his still insufficient stature, was prepared with a cushion for him.

It was certainly only a quite trivial little affair, and yet it stabbed Lensky to the heart.

Potage au bisque was also his favorite soup. He stared at Natalie's place, which remained vacant.

A great embarrassment mingled with his pain. He sent the servant, busy at the side-board, out of the room on some pretext.

"Mother is not coming?" he turned to the boy, who had already begun to eat his soup.

"No; mamma has a headache. Poor mamma!"

"Do you wish to be a very clever boy, Kolia?"

"Yes, papa!"

"Then take this bowl of soup to your mother. Do not spill it; perhaps mamma will take a few drops."

With an important face Kolia undertook his errand. Lensky opened the door of the dining-room for him, and looked after him while he tripped along the green-carpeted, dimly-lighted corridor. How pretty and pleasing all that was! The lamps, which stood out from old-fashioned inlaid plates of polished copper, the stags' antlers on the brown wainscoting. And he had not felt happy at home!

Then Kolia came springing back. "I left the soup there," he told his father, who had remained listening and spying in the doorway, "but mamma did not wish to eat it."

"What is mamma doing?"

"She is holding little sister on her lap."

In the course of the meal, and when he noticed that his father's plate continually remained empty, Kolia also lost his appetite. At first, in the most caressing tones, he urged his father to eat.

"But, papa, don't you see, you must help yourself to a little bit; it is such a good dinner to-day. We made out the bill of fare, mamma and I, early this morning at breakfast, and I remembered all your favorite dishes which she had forgotten. She was so gay to-day, before she had a headache, and she only got that headache because she ran through the park to-day without any hat, in the noon sun. But eat something, papa."

Lensky still stared at Natalie's empty place.

All at once he noticed an unusual commotion in the house; confused talking together, quick running to and fro. He sprang up and went out in the corridor.

There he saw Natalie's maid, with disturbed face, and anxious, over-hasty steps, coming out of her mistress' room.

"What is the matter; is madame more ill?" he asked in sudden fright.

"No, monsieur, but the little girl is very ill; it came on quite suddenly. Madame has told me to hurry over to Chancy for the doctor."

For one moment he stood still; then he turned to the sick-room--entered.

It was no contagious illness. Kolia was not sent away from the house; only they told him to keep very quiet, for which he was ready without that, for the weight which oppressed the house was sufficient to constrain the fresh animation of his elastic child-nature. Quite cautiously he only occasionally crept up to the sick-room, opened the door, whose knob he could scarcely reach with his little hand, and whispered: "How is little sister now?"

Yes, how was the little sister?

It was an inflammation of the lungs which had attacked the little one. The physician did not conceal from the parents what little hope there was of recovery.

Two days, three nights long, they both sat together near the cradle in which the sick little girl lay; two days, three nights, in which the tiny body restlessly threw itself here and there between the lace-trimmed pillows, while the breath, interrupted by fierce and tormenting fits of coughing, with difficulty gaspingly forced itself out from the little breast. Sometimes Maschenka cried impatiently and pulled at the coverings with her weak little hands, and then looked at her parents with that hurt, reproachful look with which quite little children desire relief from their parents.

Why did not her parents help her--why must she suffer so?

And Natalie, who formerly had been the tenderest mother in the whole world, took this all wearily, almost indifferently, as a person whose heart, benumbed by a great despair, is no longer susceptible to a new pain. She scarcely worried herself over the endangered little life. Yes! Maschenka would die, she told herself, the dear, charming Maschenka, over whom she had always so rejoiced. She still heard her cooing laughter like a distant echo in her remembrance. Yes, Maschenka would die! Why should she not die? It was really better for her than to grow up to feel such grief in the future as had burned and parched her mother's heart. Yes, she would die, and then Natalie would lay her head down on the little pillow, near the pale face of the child, and fall asleep forever rest forget! When Maschenka was dead, Natalie had no more duties!--Kolia?--Oh, Kolia would make his way in the world.

But Maschenka did not wish to die: this world pleased her too well, she did not wish to.

The fever became higher; ever more impatiently the child threw herself about in the cradle. On the evening of the third day the doctor, a skilful, wise, conscientious family physician, whom Natalie had frequently consulted for any little illness of the children, and who, under the direction of a Parisian specialist, fought with death for Maschenka's little life,--on the evening of the third day he said that probably the crisis would occur in the night; he would come again at six o'clock in the morning and look after it. He said that very sadly. Lensky accompanied him out. When he came back in the sick-room, the expression of his face was still sadder than before.

The little one became still more restless--she would not stay in her cradle. Incessantly she raised herself from the pillows, cried pitifully, and stretched out her little arms. Natalie took the little patient, warmly wrapped in coverings, on her lap, but the little one would not stay there either. She felt that her mother was not just the same to her as formerly. Quite angrily she turned away from her, and stretched out her little hands to her father. Lensky took her in his arms, wrapped the covering still closer round her tiny limbs, and with a thousand tender words, coaxed her to rest. With what evident pleasure the little body leaned against his breast!

Natalie's eyes rested on him. It had been just the same for two days. He had cared for the child, not she. Only she now, for the first time, took account of it. How tenderly he held the child! what touchingly poetic words of love he whispered to it! Expressions, such as one finds only in those songs in which the people complain of their pain! Just such words had he formerly found for her--at that time--in those old days, when he still loved her--and a stream of new, animating warmth crept through her benumbed heart.

She still watched him. Her eyelids became heavy.

Suddenly she started up, looked confusedly about her; she had been fast asleep. What had happened meanwhile? The morning light already streamed into the room; without the rain rattled against the window panes. When had it begun to rain then? Where was Lensky? He stood near the window and gazed out. How sad he looked, how pale!

The child!--and with a feeling of immeasurably painful anxiety her heart now fully awoke to new life. She had not the courage to look in the cradle. Then Lensky turned to her. "The child!" murmured she.

He laid his finger on his mouth. "She sleeps--" Then listening: "The doctor comes."

The physician entered. He bent over the cradle; the little patient slept calmly and sweetly, her little fist against her cheek. Her little face was very pale and sadly lengthened, but her brow was moist and a peaceful expression was on her tiny mouth.

"She is better," said the doctor, astonished and pleased. He scarcely understood it. "The fever is gone, the crisis is past, and if there are no quite unusual circumstances, the danger is over. A couple of spoonfuls of strong broth when she wakes, and no more medicine. Adieu, à tantôt!" and he left the room.

The door had closed behind him, his steps resounded in the corridor. Natalie rose; she did not know what she wished; to look at the child, to fall on her knees, to pray! Then her eyes met Lensky's. She started, stretched out her arms as if to repel a suddenly awakened pain--a swoon overcame her--she sank down. He took her in his arms, carried her into the adjoining room, and stretched her out on a couch. He opened the window and let the spicy, rain-cooled morning air stream in. Then he wet the temples of the unconscious woman with cologne and loosened her dress. At that her only carelessly fastened-up hair loosed itself and slid down in all its dark abundance over her shoulders.

How wonderfully charming she looked in her pale, melancholy loveliness! Involuntarily he approached his lips to her temples; then she opened her eyes; a shudder shook her frame and she turned her face away from him.

It went through him from the top of his head to the sole of his foot. He had forgotten, but now he remembered accurately. How dared he approach this woman so confidentially!--she was no longer his wife. She had only tolerated him near her as long as the child lay sick, really only tolerated! With fearful bitterness he remembered how she had held herself far from him, even near Maschenka's bed of pain. And now, when the little one was well--why let himself be shown the door a second time?

"You need not be afraid, Natalie, I am going; I had only forgotten--pardon!" With that he could not deny himself to take her hand; he believed she would draw away her hand from him; no, she let it lie quite passively in his. Now he wished to free it, but then, quite softly, but ever firmer, her fingers closed round his. She herself held him back. Rejoicing and sobbing he drew her to his breast.

Scarcely a moment later he felt in his inmost heart quite strangely, uncomprehendingly, a cold gnawing vexation.

He did not understand that she could pardon so easily. He had not expected that of her.