Gzhatski observed her in amazed silence, and smilingly watched the transformation of yesterday’s nun, with her flat hair and her eternal black dress, into a coloured fashion-plate. Being, in his heart, far more pleased than otherwise that his future wife should be well dressed and elegant, he did not protest. What disquieted him much more, indeed, was a passion that Irene suddenly developed for gambling. Gzhatski, having himself once advised her to cultivate some passion, if only artificially, just that it might attach her more firmly to earth, very ruefully contemplated the development of this passion now that it had shown itself without any effort on Irene’s part! Sergei Grigorievitch, indeed, was one of those men who, in the woman they have chosen, admit only one possible passion: that of love for themselves!
It was anything but easy to dissuade Irene from gambling. She revelled in the sensations of those feverish minutes passed at the tables, falling into the depths of despair at the loss of fifty francs, and soaring into an absolute frenzy of delight at the gain of forty! On leaving the gambling rooms, Irene took deep breaths of the fresh sea air, her eyes shone, and it seemed to her that the sea and the hills and the flowers had never been so beautiful before. It was this that displeased Gzhatski. He might have reconciled himself to the idea of her gambling had she regretted her losses, but he could not forgive her that feverish delight, that moral ecstacy and satisfaction that she gleaned from this new craze.
Sometimes he succeeded in luring her away from the temptations of the tables by arranging excursions in the neighbourhood. Like most Slavs, indeed like most sons of a young race, Gzhatski could not grow old, and at forty, he often laughed and played pranks like a schoolboy. He had the capacity, indeed, of infecting everyone around him with his gaiety, even cab-drivers, boatmen, and waiters! To each and all of them he knew how to say the right word, or make the right joke, at the right moment. He was descended indeed from a noble old race of landowners, who had always been ready to till their own soil, side by side with their peasants, seeing in the latter, not machines, but interesting and deserving human beings.
To Irene, such simple relations with the lower classes seemed strangely new and original. In the usual Petrograd fashion, she had hardly ever exchanged a word with her servants, and barely knew them by sight. At hotels at which she had stayed for two months she had nearly always, on leaving, been obliged, before giving a tip, to ask the manager which waiter had served her all the time, she herself being quite unable to distinguish him from the others.
In every way, indeed, Gzhatski proved a most interesting travelling companion. Men always bring gaiety and animation into the lives of lonely women, even when they are neither lovers nor husbands, but simply distant relations. This is so, because women who have no social activities to distract their thoughts are inclined to look upon life as something tragic and fatal, against which it is useless to struggle. Men, on the other hand, who, if only indirectly, make our laws and govern our countries, do not attach much importance to life, often indeed regarding it from the humorous standpoint. It is popularly supposed that men are more conservative than women, and that they care more about traditions and old customs. Actually, however, the laws and customs they passionately defend are invariably useful at the moment, and when the need for them passes, men are the first to abandon them. Women, on the contrary, cling desperately to traditions, especially inconvenient and troublesome ones, and if ever they decide to defy even some unimportant social law, they do it tragically, as though flinging themselves into an abyss.
“There! I have cut off my hair, and I smoke,” thinks a newly-converted Nihilist. “The thing is done—there is no turning back. Whatever I may do now, nothing can win me back my old position, and the respect of my fellows. And so—vogue le galère!”
How many perfectly modest women having once let their hairdressers persuade them to dye their hair auburn, immediately assume the manners and conversational style of “cocottes!”
The southern spring, the music, the excitement of gambling, the constant society of a charming man, all this did not fail to make its due impression on Irene, with the result that she fell, day by day, more and more deeply in love with Gzhatski. In her past dreams of love she had always seen herself hotly disputing with her lover, proclaiming her views and theories like a prophetess, and bringing him round unreservedly to her opinions on all matters. To her own astonishment, however, she now no longer cared in the least about any of her old theories and ideas, and was ready to give them all up without a sigh, to please Gzhatski. She had long ago left off being particular about what he said to her, her attention being entirely riveted on the way he said it, on his every movement, smile, or change of expression. Alone in her room in the evening she sat up late, and could not sleep at night, for thinking of his elegant figure, the gleam of his even white teeth, the picturesque manner in which he smoked his cigarette, etc. The blood rushed to her head, her heart beat loudly, she breathed quickly. Père Etienne had been right in suspecting that an ardent temperament lay concealed under her cold exterior. It is probable, indeed, that Irene was one of the many “chaste sensualists” who abound in society. It is strange that these unconsciously voluptuous natures, suffering as they do very extremely through the virtuous life imposed on them by circumstances, always attribute their sufferings to some lofty ethical reason, such as loss of faith in God, disappointment in their friends, misunderstood ideals, etc., and would in every case be deeply offended should anyone dare to suggest to them a very simple and prosaic cure for their “noble sorrow.” They usually guard their virtue very jealously, vaguely feeling that if once passion gains the upper hand over them, they will be her slaves for life.