She no longer urges the girl to confess her sorrow, she only silently caresses her; and when she sees that her caresses only excite the unhappy child instead of calming her, she sadly withdraws.

"You can speak to me as if I were your mother!" The words ring through Mascha's soul. And if her own mother still lived, as if she could confess what tormented her! It is not possible! There must be a mistake somewhere. He cannot be so bad; no man can be so bad!

She seats herself at her writing-table, dips her pen in the ink; but the words will not come. No; she must go to him, see him, speak personally with him. She takes her hat and jacket and hurries out.

However quickly she made and carried out her resolution to visit him the first time, it is hard for her now. She has taken a thick veil with her, loses her way, takes a carriage and bids it wait on the Place Malesherbes. In the carriage she ties the veil over her face. Now she gets out, gives the driver five francs, and does not wait for him to give her back anything. She notices the strange shake of the head with which he looks after her and turns away.

Now she has retched the No. ---- of the Avenue Messine. Her feet are weighted to the ground like lead. Five, six steps she ascends--stands still. A cold shudder runs over her. No, she cannot, she cannot meet him. She turns round, is back in the Avenue Wagram before they have missed her.

XIX.

In the beginning of February, the news of the death of Sergei Alexandrovitch a.s.sanow arrived in Paris. Early in March Nikolai returned to Paris as a wealthy young man wholly independent of his father. His uncle had provided for him brilliantly in his will. Anna Jeliagin and Mascha were wholly excluded. Anna was in despair. Mascha cared nothing about it. She no longer cared about anything--poor little Mascha!

"What have you done with my little bird?" Nikolai had exclaimed when he saw her again for the first time after his return to Paris. Instead of the round-faced child whom he had looked forward to seeing, a weary, sad person had come to meet him, who did not fall jubilantly on his neck, as he was accustomed to from his little sister, but only wearily, quite vexatiously gave him her cheek to kiss. When he wished to fathom the cause of her sadness, she grew angry, quite wild, so that, offended and at the same time frightened, he turned from her, and then--it was perhaps half an hour later, at twilight, and he did not know she was in the room--she crept softly up to him and kissed his hand silently and humbly. That went to his heart more than her rudeness. He wished to take her in his arms and caress her, but she escaped and left the room, with a soft, whimpering cry of pain. He inquired of his relatives whether they suspected the cause of the great change. Madame Jeliagin was silent, troubled. But Anna, with a scornful shrug of her shoulders, told him "Mascha had certainly set her hopes on Count Barenburg, for her lack of spirits dated from his betrothal to Sylvia Anthropos, which really showed a great imagination, for she could boast of no remarkable attentions on his part."

At first Nikolai was relieved by Anna's explanation. "Such a heartache, which is really no heartache, but an imagined affliction, can be cured with a little distraction and much loving patience," he thought. But whatever he tried to amuse his sister failed.

The child grew daily more pale and miserable; her breath was short, she dragged her feet along. Nikolai consulted a physician. After a few superficial questions he prescribed iron and quinine. She took the medicine patiently, without attaining a favorable result, but when Nikolai proposed to her to consult another learned man, she grew painfully excited, and said: "Wait till father comes." So everything was postponed until then. They expected the virtuoso back early in June.

If he had not been so occupied and self-absorbed, the child's condition would have caused Nikolai more anxiety. But like all lovers, he had grown selfish, and his sharp sight was obscured by pa.s.sion. The only reality in life, the fixed point about which everything revolved, was Nita. Everything else was of secondary consideration to him.

Had he approached his aim? On the whole he was contented. Nita had greeted him cordially when he appeared in her studio for the first time after his return, and since then had daily been more friendly to him.

He came frequently to the studio, was a kind of privileged guest. He did commissions for the ladies at the color dealers, grew very learned in all technical expressions of the trade. He brought them models from places where respectable women can scarcely go. He soon knew all the models by name; they smiled at him on the streets, and spoke to him when they met him.

At first he had often gone for Mascha before he went to the Avenue Frochot, but it became ever more difficult for him to induce the girl to accompany him. Mascha grew daily more gloomy and reserved. She ate nothing, she neglected her dress. Day by day she sat in the library and read--read everything that she could find, she, who formerly, as a thoroughly well brought up girl, had read only what Nikolai had proposed.

She slept badly, and never without being tormented by fearful dreams, from which she awoke always with the same cry for help on her lips which rang out into vacancy, and was always the same tender word, "Mother!"

That was an old custom. She had suffered from bad dreams from childhood, and had then always called her mother. As long as she had been able, Natalie had risen and gone to the child's bed and petted her, told her all sorts of foolish trifles, until at length she had calmly fallen asleep.

But now all that was over. "Oh, if you had only been with me, mother!

Why must you leave me?" sobbed Maschenka often. It was the only reproach she uttered during the long, inconsolable months.

And Nikolai, formerly the tenderest brother, now contented himself with from time to time giving his pale little sister a compa.s.sionate caress, and had something more important to do than incessantly to ponder whether unfortunate love for a man whom she had only slightly known could really suffice to so completely change his gay little sister. The only one who thought much about the strange change in her little favorite was Nita. But however she tried, by caresses and persuasion, to win Mascha's confidence, all failed. Maschenka even opposed her with a certain hostility; at least, Nita could ascribe her manner to nothing else, so violently and with such gloomy, irritable obstinacy did she repulse all advances.

And at length Nita also grew weary of knocking at a heart which would not open to her. All went its way. The sun shone, spring blossomed, and Nikolai went oftener and oftener to the Avenue Frochot, just as if a poor little girl were not tormenting herself into despair.

Yes, the world went its way, and Nita and Sophie had all sorts of things to do, for it was an important time for artists, the time for sending to the Salon. Nikolai shared the excitement.

Nita was really an unusual being, and about this time others beside those belonging to her intimate circle began to find it out. The picture which she had prepared for the exhibition had not only received the congratulations of all her colleagues, but had induced M. Sylvain to bring to Nita's studio the best-known art lovers and most famous artists in Paris to pa.s.s judgment on her picture.

All were surprised at the young Austrian's achievement. But she shook her head quite vexedly at their extravagant praise. It seemed to her that they were mocking her. It was such a simple picture.

Nikolai was there at the studio when a messenger brought Nita, one afternoon, a note from M. Sylvain, which, having scarcely opened, she handed to Sophie, who read it aloud:

"_Vous etes recue avec acclamation No_. 1. _Espere une medaille_.

Sylvain."

Nita grew very pale; she trembled in her whole frame, and began suddenly to cry. This triumph, which he had been the first to prophesy, and which made him proud and happy for her, at the same time made Nikolai's heart very heavy. "She is through and through an artist nature," said he to himself as he observed her great excitement; "much more than she herself knows." And in that he was not mistaken.

Naturally, on varnishing day he was at the Palais de l'Industrie. Not without a certain excitement, he wandered up the great steps between painters, journalists, models, and curious ones. Three times he made the rounds through all the rooms seeking her picture, and as yet he had not found it. But there! Was not that the picture almost concealed by a crowd of admirers and critics? Nikolai found his way through and gazed at the picture. It hung on the middle of the wall, on the line.

For Nikolai naturally the whole Salon was a mere trifle to her picture, and if the admiration of others was of no such large dimension, the success of the picture was still great, decisive.

And Nikolai sat down opposite the picture, listened to every word, every enthusiastic expression, and imprinted them upon his memory so as to tell them to her. He waited for her. She would surely come in the course of the day to see her work. The crowd had not diminished. A critic took notes of it, a painter, with nose close to the canvas, made gestures expressive of his delight at the drawing.

Then Nikolai heard a step, looked round--yes, there she was, tall, slender, with the proud carriage of her head, and her never-to-be-forgotten eyes. The gloomy shadow was still in her eyes, the shadow which never left them. Nevertheless, she enjoyed her triumph, and it became her. She bore it modestly, but still as if it were perfectly natural.

Nikolai had never seen her so charming. She wore a simple, soft, clinging woollen dress, a little bonnet fastened under her chin.

He sprang up. "An immense success," cried he to her. She laid her finger on her lips.

"Please hush, I have no wish to a.s.semble a court of journalists and colleagues about me!" said she in Russian. She spoke in Russian sometimes, and it always pleased Colia to hear her attempt his dearly loved mother tongue.

Then one of the men turned round from her picture. He was a famous critic who knew her. "_C'est elle_," whispered he to the others. Bowing deeply, he stepped up to her and asked if he might introduce several of her particular admirers.

She could not refuse. She was surrounded. Nikolai remained respectfully in the background and watched her. At length she freed herself. He came up to her again.

"Why are you laughing?" she asked him, quite vexedly.

"You look so unhappy," he replied. "I have never seen any one who could have received an ovation with such an expression of mere tolerance."

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "H-m! And you perhaps think that I am above such flatteries, that they are wearisome to me?" she asked.

"It had that appearance."

"How appearances deceive!" sighed she, humorously. "No one is more susceptible to flattery than I; but, quite aside from the fact that many of these men said coa.r.s.e things which they considered compliments to me, the expressions of merely two or three of them were agreeable to me. Men artists with us women artists completely ignore that thus far and no further, that atmosphere of apartness, which forms a convenient barrier between a modest woman and a man. What _sans gener_ their conversation requires; they treat us as men, and that is unbearable."

Nikolai smiled still more. He was indescribably pleased at her unvanquishable maidenly sensitiveness.

She thrust her hands thoughtfully in the pockets of her jacket. "Do not ridicule me," sighed she; "but how agreeable it is to a.s.sociate with a really well-bred man like you, for instance. One feels that first when one is an artist."

"You are a droll artist," said he, and laughed quite heartily.

She shrugged her shoulders comically, and said: "It seems so to me sometimes."

His heart was in his mouth. Was not that the moment? But before he could have said a word, she turned away her head and said: "Ah! there is Sonia."

Sonia perceived her friend. "Ah! there you are at last," cried she, gayly. "I have sought you for an hour. Your picture is splendid; your success indescribable. You cannot imagine how proud I am of you."

Her true, unselfish enthusiasm became her so well that Nikolai could not help pressing heartily her cordially outstretched hand.