“Do you really mean that we are not to receive them?”
“No,” he reiterated. “This is my 'no' day.” And the reception for that evening was actually put off. The jest seemed highly entertaining to Vassili. I heard him laughing to himself as he went downstairs; and in the days that followed he frequently repeated it.
Shortly afterwards he took us all back to Kieff and there he had many “no” days. In particular he would not let Bozevsky visit us; and more than a month passed without my seeing him.
At last it happened that the Stahls invited us to a ball, and Vassili, who chanced to be in a good temper, accepted. I knew I should meet Bozevsky there, and at the mere thought of seeing him again I trembled with joy and fear.
Elise Perrier dressed me in a filmy gossamer gown of soft opalescent tints, and fastened round my neck the famous O'Rourke pearls—those pearls which, according to family traditions, had once decorated the slender neck of Mary Stuart.
As Vassili put me into the troika he was all kindness and amiability; he wrapped me closely in the furs, and then took his seat beside me, muffling himself up to his nose in the bearskins. The horses started and we were off like the wind.
During the drive tender and kindly feelings towards Vassili filled my heart. I said to myself that perhaps he was after all not wholly to blame for his faults and follies. He, too, was so young; perhaps if I had been less of a child at the time of my marriage I should have known how to make him love me more. And, after all, were we not still in time to reshape our lives? What if we were to go far away from Kieff, far from St. Petersburg, and try to take up the thread of our broken idyll again? My hand sought his. He grasped it and held it warmly clasped under the rug without turning towards me; I could see his eyes shining under his fur cap as he gazed straight before him, while we sped over the silent snow. During that drive, from the bottom of my heart, I forgave him all his transgressions and silently craved forgiveness for mine. Already I seemed to see myself with him and the children and Aunt Sonia happily secluded in some smiling rose-clad mansion in Italy. He would take up the study of his music again, perhaps he would compose, as he had often spoken of doing—while I, seated at his feet, would read the Italian poets that I loved, raising my eyes now and then to contemplate the motionless blue wave of the distant Apennines....
But the troika had stopped, and Vassili sprang out upon the snow. Through the illuminated windows the tzigane music poured forth its waves of sensuous melody—and alas! the rhythmic swing of it swept away, as in a whirlwind, the peaceful dreams of Italy, of the rose-clad mansion and the Italian poets.
While the servants were taking our cloaks and snowshoes from us I whispered hurriedly to Vassili: “Dearest, be good to-night. Do not drink much.”
“Why not? What a strange idea!” he said; and we passed into the overheated, overlighted rooms.