I said “Yes,” and felt inclined to weep.
“Come in, come in!” he cried eagerly, taking me by the arm and leading me to the door.
A waiter threw it wide open. I had a dazzling vision of a table resplendent with crystal, silver, and flowers, and the bare jeweled shoulders of women.
“Tarnowsky!” called the Grand Duke from the threshold. “Fortunate among men! Behold—the most glorious of your conquests!”
Vassili had started to his feet and was looking at me with amazed and incredulous eyes. There was a deep silence. I felt as if I should die. Vassili came up to me. He took me brusquely by the hand, crushing my fingers in his iron clasp. “You are mad!” he said. Then he looked at me from head to foot—not with the gaze of a husband, nor yet with that of a lover, but with the cold curious scrutiny of the perfect connoisseur.
“Come,” he said at last, drawing me towards the others who were in a riot of laughter. “I have always told my friends that you were a chilling, lily-white flake of snow. You are not!” And he laughed. “You are a blazing little firebrand! Come in!”
Thenceforward my husband would always have me with him. My untutored adolescence was trailed from revelry to revelry, from banquet to orgy; my innocence swept into the maelstrom of a licentious life. I was forced to look into the depths of every depravity; to my lips was proffered every chalice of shame.
Oh, if as I stood trembling on the confines of maidenhood, some strong and tender hand had drawn me into safety, should not I have been like other women, those happy women who walk with lofty brows in the sunshine, august and ruthless in their purity?
But, alas! when with tardy and reluctant step I issued forth from my long childhood, a thousand cruel hands were thrust out to push me towards the abyss.