"Oh, Tatyana, Tatyana!" he cried passionately to himself. "You are my guardian angel! you only my good genius! I love you only, and will love you for ever, and I will not go to see her. Forget her altogether! Let her amuse herself with her generals."
That very evening Irina sent him a message, asking him to come and see her, and, in spite of all his determinations, he went. She saw him alone in a room in one of the best hotels in Baden. "Grigory Mihalovitch," she cried, as soon as he had closed the door behind him, "here we are alone at last, and I can tell you how glad I am at our meeting, because it... gives me a chance... of asking your forgiveness."
Litvinov started involuntarily at this unexpected reference to old times.
"Forgiveness... for what?" he muttered.
"For what? I wronged you, though of course it was my fate, and I do not regret it. You must tell me you forgive me, or else I shall imagine you feel... de la rancune."
As he looked into her beautiful eyes, shining with tears, Litvinov's senses seemed to swim.
"I will remember nothing," he managed to say; "nothing but the happy moments for which I was once indebted to you."
Irina held out both hands to him; Litvinov clasped them warmly, and did not at once let them go. Something that long had not been secretly stirred in his heart at that soft contact.... They fell into conversation, he learning from her something of her life, she extracting from him in fragments the details of his career. General Ratmirov's arrival put an end to their converse, and Litvinov rose to depart. At the door Irina stopped him.
"You have told me everything," she said, "but the chief thing you have concealed. You are going to be married, I am told."
Litvinov blushed up to his ears. As a fact, he had intentionally not referred to Tatyana.