Beside herself, she sprang up to leave the room. But before she had reached the door, he came up to her. Was that really he--the man with the red face and shining eyes? Even to-day the desperate cry of fear which she gave rings in her ears. Steps approached from without; he let her go.
Yes, that was the end of all the touching kindness, of all the heaven-aspiring enthusiasm.
The next day the Njikitjin was to have taken her back to her mother. She did not wait for that. By the earliest train, she secretly hurried from Vienna. A few hours later she lay in bed with a violent fever. When, six weeks later, still very weak, and holding to the furniture for support, she entered her little boudoir, dust lay everywhere thick and gray, even on his picture, so that it was quite unrecognizable. She took the picture and wished to burn it. She could not. As she held it over the coals, it seemed to her as if she would throw something living into the fire--and she only hid it and did nothing further.
For a full year after her recovery she could bear no music. She had liked to draw from childhood, without thinking much of this talent with her passion for music, but in her great depression it served to distract her thoughts. At her urgent request, her mother left Austria and settled in Paris with her daughter, who now devoted herself to painting.
When her mother died, the despair which Nita felt at this loss for the first time completely pushed the old recollection in the background. She had scarcely thought of it until the day when for love of Sonia she had let herself be persuaded to attend Lensky's concert. When she heard him play, when at those wonderful tones the old intoxication overpowered her, then also awoke a horror of the fascination which this man had for her, and with this horror the great hatred which she had felt for years, a boundless loathing. She wished him ill with all her heart; she, who formerly would not have hurt a hair of any one's head, could not think of anything that would be painful enough to sufficiently wound him.
She is revenged; the blow has fallen! But what is that? She looks back, the recollection of the fearful scene makes no impression on her, shrinks together, grows dim--it is gone. She seeks her hatred in her heart, and cannot find it.
XXVIII.
The Jeliagins' trunks have already gone with the maid to the railway station. The carriage which is to take the two ladies already stands waiting. In vain has Barbara represented to her daughter how this precipitate flight will make Mascha's position much worse, how it will be almost impossible to conceal the misfortune.
Not an hour longer than was necessary to arrange her affairs would Anna consent to remain, and, as always, the mother had obeyed her daughter's command. But at the last moment, when she and Anna stood in the vestibule, she, so to speak, broke loose from the chain. "I--I have forgotten something--I must get something." With these words she rushes up the stairs, stumbling, treading on her dress at every step, and knocks at Mascha's door.
"What do you want?" calls out Lensky, harshly, while he comes out to her.