It followed that Mademoiselle Nathalie passed through two extremely trying years. At the end of them, however, she was a child transformed. No one now could possibly mistake her for a boy. She could read and write, spell fairly, had some knowledge of arithmetic and the conjugation of Amo: and, finally, her knowledge of intricate profanity had materially lessened. Nowadays, when she was left alone in her rage, her most forceful expressions seemed to be "Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!" or "Sapr-r-risti!" of her mild little tutor or her more vigorous French maid.
In spite of this conventional training, Nathalie, whose temperament contained a strong dash of masculinity, was quite eleven years old before she began to turn her vivid imagination to dreams of distant débutantism or still remoter officers, who, in the most brilliant of uniforms, should appear at miraculous moments in her career, bringing shame and jealousy to armies of ill-mannered rivals. After the first three months in the Catherine Institute, this style of amusement also changed, and she was overcome by a religious mania which, being encouraged on every hand, might possibly have become really dangerous. It was by finally emerging from it unscathed, and having, at the age of thirteen years and six months, resolved herself into an agreeably normal young person whose quiet manners covered a swift and keenly feminine brain, that Nathalie Dravikine proved herself worthy of her mother's steel.
This, indeed, Countess Caroline came herself to perceive. After their long winter's separation, during those few days together in the sorrowing house of Gregoriev, during the April of 1857, mother and daughter came closer together than ever before. Madame Dravikine was softened by grief; and the consolation she found in her daughter's presence was as great as it was unexpected. Nathalie's tenderness and gentleness were certainly traits of the Dravikines, rather than of the Blashkov family. But Caroline, absorbed in memories of her beloved sister, failed either to analyze these, or to pay much heed to the two or three brief scenes between her girl and Ivan, which should have been summarily checked in their infancy. As it was, Mademoiselle Nathalie gained some relief from gloom and loneliness in the open admiration of her cousin; and, after the first day of novelty, found herself taking a quivering delight in this, her first affair.
The little climax of it all, that five minutes on the platform of the Petersburg station, which ended in a most uncousinly kiss, flamed scarcely less hot in the memory of the maiden than in that of Ivan. Nathalie carried back with her into the gray Petersburg Institute such a host of flagrant dreams as kept a dozen chums about her through the long twilights of as many afternoons. For the damsel was an erratic priestess of Eros; and, at this dream-age, she and her comrades gave to the technique of forthcoming flirtation a patient analysis that promised adequate devastation among the courtier army awaiting their acknowledged young-ladyhood.
Thus comes it that we take a final glance through two childish prison-houses, in far-separate Russian cities, wherein a youth and a maiden lie nightly dreaming the same dreams: one of them a spirit already bonded to the service of mind under the whip of circumstance: destined to storm rocky heights, from which hard-won eminences he shall command great views of sweeping plains and far-off mountain ranges; the other a pretty chrysalis on the eve of her change into a butterfly of butterflies; who is, nevertheless, to attempt flights overhigh and overfar for her frail wings; venturing to unfriendly lands whence she must return with frayed and tired pinions and a bruised and bleeding little soul. And their two destinies, so divergent, are yet fated, ever and again, in the swift swinging round their orbits, to approach, touch, and bound away again in opposite directions, strive though they may to maintain for a while some parallel course.
Kinder, most surely, just to leave them there: well-guarded children, walled securely away from the black, bleak world; oblivious of all things save the white innocency of their dreams of first, most fragile, high-romantic love.