Already she had given all that was in her to give. She was totally inexperienced. But he had at last, and recently, tasted the forbidden apple. And already there had risen in him such a host of fierce, conflicting passions as left him half frightened at the forbidden possibilities now thronging his heart. To-night, as he looked into the eyes of this pure and exquisite girl, there rushed upon him all suddenly, the real meaning of man-love; the fulness thereof; the fury of perfected passion: the union of love and of desire.
Poor Ivan! The evening held things other than delight for him. As he sat beside his cousin, talked to her, held her in his arms during one of the wild, Russian mazurkas, he felt his body tremble with the terrible force within him. And once the little form he held twisted, suddenly, in his embrace. Nathalie cried out, and looked up at him; and he realized that his strong clasp had hurt her. His look answered hers. Then the child lowered her eyes, while a furious color dyed her cheeks and neck; and Ivan could have shouted aloud at what he saw and knew. Confidently he demanded of her more dances, and more and more. And she granted them mechanically, neither thinking nor caring for appearances, nor for any other person in those rooms. She was like one in a dream. Vladimir de Windt, marvelling at the recklessness of the affair, came once to the twain, thinking to expostulate with Ivan. But what he saw in the two faces turned blankly upon him, filled him with such sudden perception that he stumbled through an excuse, and went off to seek some spot where he could think; saying to himself, as he went:
"Good God! Who would have believed he could love like that!—and she also!"
But there were others in those rooms who had not his insight. And it came finally to the remembrance of Madame Dravikine, in the midst of a most amusing tête-à-tête, that she was no longer a free agent at balls: that she was chaperoning a daughter who appeared to be alarmingly unconventional. Leaning upon the arm of her titled companion, Madame Dravikine went forth to fulfil the first scheme of Ivan's relentless destiny.
Lieutenant Gregoriev and his cousin had finally retreated to a small and empty antechamber, where the strains of the distant band came in a soft echo to their ears. Ivan was leaning forward, in front of the girl, whose eyes were lowered. A moment before his right hand had closed, gently, over her own unresisting one; and the words he was speaking would have been inaudible to any one two yards away. Nathalie was with him in another world. At her feet, forgotten, lay the camellias, looking like a splash of blood upon the slippery floor. Ivan's head was swimming as he talked. But, in the midst of a sentence, he saw his companion give a great start. Then she snatched her hand from his, pushed him aside, and rose, unsteadily, her face deathly white. Ivan, noting the flowers, stooped for them, and, ere he returned them to her, detached one, and thrust it into the pocket of his uniform. Then he lifted his look to meet the blazing eyes of his aunt, and the cynical smile of a tall, gold-laced man, whose breast was covered with orders, and whose mustache and imperial were known to and hated by all Petersburg; for Prince Féodoreff was a person whose penchant for feminine youth and beauty had carried him into many walks of life.
The present little scene was interesting, but brief. Ivan never knew how it was that Nathalie was presently disappearing through a doorway on the arm of this man; her much-abused bouquet, held by one ribbon in her listless right hand, trailing eloquently upon the ground; while he, furious, but still dizzy from unwonted emotion, stood facing his aunt. When her cold look had become intolerable to him, she added to it her voice; saying, in a tone he had never heard from her:
"It is a pity I am forced to understand that my daughter is not to be trusted with her cousin, even for one hour,—in a royal palace!"
With this she would have turned away. But something in Ivan's eyes stopped her, despite her justified anger.
"Mademoiselle Nathalie Alexeiovna is to be trusted with any one, anywhere, for any length of time. But with no one could she ever be safer than with me, madame!" he said, passionately.
"Ah! And your method of taking care of her, is to manage so that she shall be criticised, commented on, laughed at by the entire court during the first hour of the first evening of her appearance in the world!—Were you not a baby, Ivan, I should think you either mad or dishonorable!—As it is, I am glad to have discovered what you are so soon; though it will take months to regain for my unfortunate daughter the position she has lost through your preposterous behavior. I shall take good care, however, that she never again endangers her reputation by receiving any sort of attention from you, in any place, at home or abroad.—You will do well not to offer it, Ivan Mikhailovitch; for I cannot have my daughter's name linked with that of a Gregoriev!" With which brutal thrust this great lady turned coolly away, leaving Ivan, stuttering with rage, behind her.