How good he was to her! What a beautiful future he planned for her! A black wall towers before her--there is no future.
One, two, three, four, five, six! The hour is here. She undresses; not any garment which can be recognized as hers will she keep on, but changes everything for articles which she has gradually purchased.
If she is washed ashore, no one shall suspect that the girl in the plain working-clothes might be the petted daughter of Boris Lensky.
Then she takes her mother's pearls, which she has not worn for a long time, from her jewel box, and kisses them. She kneels down before her holy picture, and prays.
Now she rises; a last time she slowly looks round her pretty room. Her heart beats to bursting.
"Eliza, tell aunt that she need not expect me to dinner to-day," she calls to the maid through the closed door of the adjoining room. "I shall dine with papa."
"Très bien, mademoiselle!"
And Mascha goes. On the stairs she suddenly feels a burning thirst. She goes into the dining-room, takes a carafe of water from the side-board, and drinks with a kind of eagerness. A red pyramid of fine, fresh raspberries, Mascha's favorite fruit, is piled up on a glass dish. She reaches for the inviting fruit, takes two, three. Suddenly something chokes her, a kind of spasm overcomes her; she hurries out. She has already reached the house-door, she hesitates. It must be! But must it be now? To live one more week, a fortnight; to enjoy the sunshine; to be indulged by her father; to forget all; to be happy! Fourteen happy days are long!
A clock in the house strikes the quarter past six. In a few minutes her aunt will return. She goes.
Now she is on the street. The Avenue Wagram lies behind her. She is in the Champs Elysées. She beckons to an empty cab. "To the nearest landing of the Swallow," she says.