Litvinov did not much like this letter himself; it did not quite truly and exactly express what he wanted to say; it was full of awkward expressions, high flown or bookish, and doubtless it was not better than many of the other letters he had torn up; but it was the last, the chief point was thoroughly stated anyway, and harassed, and worn out, Litvinov did not feel capable of dragging anything else out of his head. Besides he did not possess the faculty of putting his thought into literary form, and like all people with whom it is not habitual, he took great trouble over the style. His first letter was probably the best; it came warmer from the heart. However that might be, Litvinov despatched his missive to Irina.
She replied in a brief note:
‘Come to me to-day,’ she wrote to him: ‘he has gone away for the whole day. Your letter has greatly disturbed me. I keep thinking, thinking ... and my head is in a whirl. I am very wretched, but you love me, and I am happy. Come. Yours, I.’
She was sitting in her boudoir when Litvinov went in. He was conducted there by the same little girl of thirteen who on the previous day had watched for him on the stairs. On the table before Irina was standing an open, semi-circular, cardboard box of lace: she was carelessly turning over the lace with one hand, in the other she was holding Litvinov’s letter. She had only just left off crying; her eyelashes were wet, and her eyelids swollen; on her cheeks could be seen the traces of undried tears not wiped away. Litvinov stood still in the doorway; she did not notice his entrance.
‘You are crying?’ he said wonderingly.
She started, passed her hand over her hair and smiled.
‘Why are you crying?’ repeated Litvinov. She pointed in silence to the letter. ‘So you were ... over that,’ he articulated haltingly.
‘Come here, sit down,’ she said, ‘give me your hand. Well, yes, I was crying ... what are you surprised at? Is that nothing?’ she pointed again to the letter.
Litvinov sat down.
‘I know it’s not easy, Irina, I tell you so indeed in my letter ... I understand your position. But if you believe in the value of your love for me, if my words have convinced you, you ought, too, to understand what I feel now at the sight of your tears. I have come here, like a man on his trial, and I await what is to be my sentence? Death or life? Your answer decides everything. Only don’t look at me with those eyes.... They remind me of the eyes I saw in old days in Moscow.’