How slowly time passes! He had not suspected that it would be so unpleasant for him to stay alone.
More, yet more, of those strange faces! There are princesses of blood royal among them; then, again, beauties for whose favor potentates have sued in vain; famous artists, and, finally, pale, poor girls whom a moment of morbid enthusiasm had robbed of their senses. They nodded to him, smiled confidentially, all the same smile of secret understanding.
"One just like the others," he calls out, and stamps on the floor, as if he would stamp upon the whole crowd. "One just like the other----"
Then one form separated itself from the throng, and stepped up to him.
He stretches out his arms to her. "Natalie," he calls. She vanishes. It was his wife; how plainly he had seen her!
She was not like the others. How had he ventured to name this angel in the same breath with the others? He had loved her passionately, however immoderately he had offended against her.
Her name was Natalie--yes, Natalie. And when he led her to the altar she was a charming, petted young girl, a Princess Assanow, who had married him against the wishes of her family. He had worshipped her, and strewn flowers at her feet, and she had been happy, and he with her. The children had come--how delightful all that was! Those were the golden years in his life--five, six years. Then--then the demon had begun to weary of Paradise. His gipsy nature had demanded its rights. He had left home, only for a time, and to let his passions have their sway; then oftener, ever oftener.
At first she had pardoned him only too easily, so easily that it had almost vexed him, so easily that he had thought she would bear anything.
But at last even she could endure it no longer--had separated from him. That was terrible, so terrible that he had thought he could not bear it. She also could not bear it, he imagined, but would recall him. He waited for that every day, and she called him back--when she lay dying.
That was now four years ago; but it seemed to him that she had died yesterday. He saw it all so plainly before him--the large room in Rome, the half-emptied medicine bottles on the invalid's night-table, and the ticking watch, a watch which he had given her years before at Colia's birth; the dim night-lamp in the corner, her white morning-dress that hung over a chair, the little slippers--the dear, tiny little slippers! There in the white bed, she, so long, so thin, with her poor wasted body, whose outline was so plainly visible under the covers, a white flannel covering with red stripes on the edge--he even remembered that. But, best of all, he remembered her, her wonderfully beautiful face. She raised herself from the pillows at his entrance, and greeted him with a smile that forgave him all; no, not only forgave, but begged his forgiveness that she--she, the poor angel--had been too weak to save him from himself, to redeem him. Then he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. He would not believe that all was over. Then, suddenly, the sun had risen, there, over the Spanish place, behind the church of Trinita de' Monti; a broad, golden ray stretched out to the dying woman.