Irene rejoiced and exulted, and life had never seemed so glorious to her before. Suddenly she felt that this was the happiest moment of her existence, and that nothing still happier could or would ever be. She rose, opened the door leading to the balcony, and stepped out. It was still dark, but one could already distinguish the trees, and there were grey streaks in the sky.
“Soon the sun will rise,” thought Irene. “How lovely the view must be from the Casino Terrace!”
The idea of seeing the sun rise attracted her. “I have lived all this time, and have never once seen it,” she said to herself. “How surprised Sergei will be when I tell him my impressions!”
Irene dressed hurriedly, and, having thrown a cloak over her dress and a scarf over her hair, stepped softly out into the corridor. All was quiet, and a grey streak of light was filtering through the glass door leading into the garden. Like a ghost, Irene slipped along the passage, when, suddenly, the slight movement of a door on the right attracted her attention. The door gradually opened, softly, slowly, carefully. Something guilty and horrible seemed suggested by this carefulness. Irene stopped still in the shadow of a large cupboard, her eyes riveted on the moving door.
At last it stood half-way open, and yesterday’s Carmen-like beauty appeared on the threshold. She wore a lace dressing-gown, and her long, wavy hair hung in heavy coils down her back. The beauty glanced to right and to left along the passage, then turned round with a whispered word, and out of the room issued—Gzhatski! He, too, whispered something, and they both laughed softly. Stepping carefully on tiptoe over the carpet, Sergei Grigorievitch stole towards the staircase, and disappeared round its bend. The beauty closed her door.…
Poor Irene’s knees shook, and all but gave way under her. Leaning against the wall, with hardly strength enough to drag one foot before the other, she staggered back to her room, and fell, almost lifeless, on the sofa.
The sun had long since risen and was forcing its way in through the shutters. The birds had long been singing, noise and movement were in the air, everywhere people were laughing and talking, but Irene still lay prone and motionless. Thoughts were rushing wildly through her head, but she could not disentangle them. Slowly, gradually, she began to realize the full force of the terrific blow that had fallen on her.
“So that is what you are like,” she murmured childishly. “And I had believed in you so completely, and had placed you so high.…”
For a moment the voice of reason tried to pacify her. “But this is nothing more than a man’s adventure, a prank, a caprice after a gay supper,” it whispered seriously. But Irene paid no attention. “If it were only the supper,” she argued, “why did not Sergei come to her, to his bride? What cared she for marriage ceremonies? Did she not, before God, belong to Gzhatski soul and body? But no, he had not come to her. He considered her old and ugly and repulsive!”
This thought filled Irene with such an agony of despair that she slipped from the sofa to the carpet, rolled about and knocked her head against the floor, striving by this means to deaden her unbearable pain. “You are old, you are ridiculous, you are hideous, in spite of your fashionable dresses!” she exclaimed wildly to herself, and, rising from the carpet, she tottered towards the looking-glass, and gazed disgustedly at her own tear-stained, tortured, suddenly aged and disfigured reflection.