“You’re a misanthrope,” said Madame Gorodischeva, with a sour smile.
Saksaoolov valued his freedom. It seemed strange to him, whenever he thought of it, that he had been so near marriage once. He had lived long in his small but tastefully furnished apartment, had got used to his man attendant, the elderly and steady Fedota, and to Fedota’s not less reliable spouse, who cooked his dinner; and he persuaded himself that he ought to remain single out of memory to his first love. In truth, his heart was growing cold from indifference born of a lonely, incomplete life.
He had his own fortune, his father and mother had died long ago, and he had no near relatives. He lived methodically and quietly; had something to do with a government department; was intimately acquainted with contemporary literature and art; and was something of an epicurean—but life itself seemed to him to be empty and aimless. Were it not that one pure, radiant fancy visited him at times he would have become entirely cold, like many others.
II
His first and only love, which ended before it had time to blossom, wrapt him closely in sad and sweet reveries, usually in the evenings. Five years earlier he had met a young girl who left an indelible impression upon him. She was pale, gentle, slender, with blue eyes, and fair wavy hair. She almost seemed to him not to belong to this earth, but was like a creature of air and mist, blown for a brief moment by fate into the city turmoil. Her movements were slow; her gentle, clear voice was soft, like the murmur of a brook purling over stones.
Saksaoolov, whether by chance or not, saw her always in a white dress. The impression of white had become inseparable from his thought of her. Her very name, Tamar, suggested to him something as white as the snow on the mountain tops.
He began to visit her at the house of her parents. More than once he had resolved to say to her those words which bind human fates together. But she never let him go on; she would always grow frightened and shy, and she would rise and leave him. What frightened her? Saksaoolov read signs of virgin love in her face; her eyes grew brighter when he entered, and a light flush suffused her cheeks.
But one never-to-be-forgotten day she listened to him. It was in the early spring. The ice on the river was gone, and the trees were covered with a soft green veil. Tamar and Saksaoolov were sitting before the window in the city house, and looking out on the Niva. He spoke, scarcely knowing what he said, but his words were both gentle and terrible to her. She grew pale, smiled vaguely, and rose. Her slender hand trembled on the carved top of the chair.
“To-morrow,” Tamar said quietly, and went out.
Saksaoolov gazed with intense feeling toward the door behind which Tamar had disappeared. His head was in a whirl. His eye fell upon a sprig of white lilac; he picked it up almost absently, and left without bidding his hosts good-bye.