They advanced in silence, passed the first story of the house.
Maryan's bachelor chambers were on the second story.
"My dear old man, I am sorry for you, enormously sorry," began young Darvid again. "I have grown so accustomed to you. You will have to suffer, and poor mamma, too. Where did he get all this? A man of such sense! I thought that his head was better ventilated—"
He could not finish, for Kranitski threw himself on his neck at the very door of his apartments. He wept. Drying his eyes with his perfumed cambric handkerchief, he said:
"My Maryan, I shall not survive this blow! I love you all so much—you are—for me—as a younger brother—"
He tried to kiss him, but Maryan broke away from his embrace, and his tears, the moisture of which he felt on his face, with discomfort.
"But it is absurd!" exclaimed he. "Are we to break our relations because they displease someone? Are we slaves? Laugh at that, my dear. Come to me as before, but pass the night now with me, for it would be difficult for you to go home at this hour."
He touched the button of the electric bell, and when the door opened at once, he said to his companion on the threshold:
"Bianca sings that aria from the 'Cavalier' gloriously, does she not? La, la, la——"
He tried to give the music, but his voice failed. So he disappeared behind the closing door, humming the aria of the splendid singer which he had just heard at supper.
Below, two clocks, one after the other, sounded out six. Through the great windows light began to enter from the snow-covered streets. That seemed the gradual and slow drawing aside of a dark curtain, from behind which came out with increasing distinctness, furniture, pictures, mirrors, candlesticks, vases, rugs, plushes, velvets, polish, gilt, mosaics, ivory, porcelain. Until all standing forth in the full light of that winter morning began like a pearl shell to interchange various colors and lustres, and to drop from the walls and ceilings reflections of gold on the shining floor.