The woman before him shook her head, sadly. "No one can ever make it right, Ivan."
"What is it, Nathalie?" In his secret mind, he was just murmuring her name, over and over again, and blessing the woe that had brought her to him.
"For the present I am here, in Moscow; and my children are with me.—I might have sent for you sooner, by note, Ivan. I ought, I suppose. But I waited too long, and so came myself!" And she looked at him, her lips smiling, her troubled eyes full of anxiety.
Even after all the years, Ivan read her well enough not to answer that smile. Instead, he led her, scarcely protesting, into the dining-room; despatched the amazed but delighted Piotr for fresh tea and something to eat; and, when they were alone, sat for a moment lost in contemplation of her, while she waited, wearily, for him to pick up the thread of their talk.
Her appearance, charming to any other man, startled and momentarily saddened Ivan. He marvelled, indeed, at the emotion roused in him by her face: the face that he had pictured as forever changeless, but which, he now perceived, time had dealt with more cruelly than with his own. Madame Féodoreff was, indeed, a woman sufficiently beautiful, sufficiently distinguished, to be looked at thrice in any assemblage. Yet her every feature, the exquisite, pearly skin, most of all the once sparkling, now deeply-seeing eyes, spoke of a long and difficult drama of life.
These things passed through his mind as he gave his order and Piotr left the room. For some moments more he was silent. Then, rousing himself, almost unwillingly, from his contemplation, he spoke.
"You should be able to guess, Nathalie, how much your coming means: how deeply it touches me. To think that you should still have confidence!—How many years is it since the winter of your début?"
Though he asked it lightly, he saw the shiver that ran over the woman at his side. "We must not count years," she said, softly. "Indeed, Ivan, now that I am here, I find it hard to explain my idea in coming.—I am alone in Moscow—virtually hiding. And I can tell you very little of my reason.—Still, you can guess, at least, that my marriage—has been—unsuccessful.—I have my children. I adore them; yet I have left their father, and so injured them forever.—That is about all I can tell you.—Up—"
"Princess, I beg of you!—"
"No, let me finish, Ivan! Up to the time of my mother's death, I never wholly realized the truth of affairs.—She managed, somehow, to shield me.—During her last years, Ivan, she regretted my marriage more than any act of her life.—Indeed, I think it was the one thoroughly cruel thing she ever did.—Since she went, I have been forced to understand: to face black truth. And so, when the time came that even my babies were beginning to ask me questions about—incidents—and—and persons who frequented my house, I had to come away. I know how the world regards a runaway wife; yet I believe that I am not universally blamed. I hope not. But, just now, it is impossible for me to face the world. I have been alone for some weeks. I came to you to-day just for—just for companionship, I suppose."