"Think of my position," continued Sonia. "How could I free myself? I could not repeat her confession. Then she herself helped me out of the difficulty--in what a manner! Three days after the moonlight scene, she told me, in the greatest excitement, Lensky was to give a concert in Berlin, and asked me to travel after him with her. When I refused, she travelled alone. Heavens! how pale you are! My story has angered you.

No wonder; I know what an effect the thing had on me! And only think, Njikitjin had the shamelessness to speak to me this evening as we left the theatre. She wishes to visit me; what do you say to that?"

"She dare not cross my threshold," burst out Nita, with flashing eyes.

"That is what I say."

"When did you, then, learn to know her?" asks Sonia, confidentially.

"I? As a very young girl in Vienna. I visited her then for a short time," says Nita, tonelessly.

"And have you never met Lensky at her house?"

"Yes, certainly."

"You never told me that," says Sonia astonished. "Why should I?" says Nita, very harshly. "It is no pleasant recollection."

When Sonia again looks round for Nita, she has vanished. She is about to hurry after her. Then she hears a voice from below call: "Good-night, good, good-night!"

"Good-night, Colia," says Sonia, joyfully, as answer.

"Is it you?" calls Nikolai, slowly, disappointedly.

"Whom else should it be?" asks she, frightened, fearfully. And softly whispering, she repeats: "Who--who----"

Yes, it is Nikolai, haunting the Pare Monceau at midnight. After he had taken his sister home, he had returned to the park to look up at Nita's windows.

He stands before a decisive point in his life. The sudden illness of the Russian diplomat in Washington has caused him to be sent there. He is advanced from attache to second secretary.

Time presses. Affairs must be quickly decided; before his departure he must have spoken to Nita.

But if his happiness should escape him now, at the last moment; if he frightens it away by some foolish, violent word!

On the other hand, if she says yes! His heart beats high. He builds the most fantastic air castles, and, charmed by his own fancies, he says to himself: "How beautiful, ah, how beautiful!"

And around him the spring dies and the blossoms fall--fall--they all fall!

XXI.

It is Sunday. In the midst of the little English Catholic chapel in Paris kneels Nita, her face in her hands. When ma.s.s is over, without waiting to greet any acquaintances, she returns home. She looks pale, has evidently slept badly. The shadow in her eyes is darker than ever.

Sadly her eyes wander over the park. "Spring is dead," says she. And suddenly--she had thought it long past, but the conversation with Sonia revived the painful remembrance anew--she thinks of that time, six full years ago, when, in a sweet, dreamy May night, quite like yesterday, a sultry hurricane had killed the spring of her young, pure, sensitive life with all its poetic enthusiasm and Heaven-aspiring, jubilant exuberance.

And with this recollection, the old, never fully vanquished horror of life has again awakened in her, that terrible, all-consuming, all-degrading horror which must forever exclude her from every sweet, unconscious, surrendering inclination of the heart.

Wearily she mounts the broad stairs to her apartment. Sonia is not at home. Nita seats herself at her writing-table, as she does every Sunday, unwillingly, but punctually, to make up her weekly accounts.

Then there is a ring without. The maid announces: "Herr Lensky."

"Let him come in," says Nita, and as Nikolai enters, adds indifferently: "Take a seat and amuse yourself as you can. There is a book of Leech's caricatures. Sonia will be back soon; her father unexpectedly arrived, and she has gone to the exhibition with him; but they are to lunch with me. You are also cordially invited if you choose to accept. Meanwhile, permit me to finish my accounts." With pen in hand, she has led him from the drawing-room where the writing-table stands into the pretty little cosey corner, and now wishes to leave him and return to her work. With an imploring glance he withholds her.

"I am not in the mood to look at picture-books," says he. "If you cannot let your accounts wait, I will come another time."

"How sensitive you are! I would have thought that we two were beyond the plane of common politeness, at least as far as I am concerned."

She puts down the pen, and sitting down on the little sofa in the cosey corner, motions him to an armchair.

"I have a confidence for you, Fraulein," murmurs Nikolai.

"I thought so," replies Nita. Over her finely chiselled white face trembles something like a difficultly suppressed smile.

"It is so hard," he continues. "Will you not help me a little?"

"No," says she, energetically. "I have not the slightest wish to a.s.sist your awkward circ.u.mlocutions." And with friendly playfulness she adds: "How can one find so hard something which is so easy?"

How cordially and unconstrainedly she looks at him!

An uneasy sensation takes possession of him.

"So easy!" murmurs he, hoa.r.s.ely. "Do you find it so easy to ask a question on whose answer depends the happiness of our whole life?"

"If one can be so sure of the answer," says she, still playfully, mockingly, but very good-naturedly.

"Sure?" His eyes rest penetratingly on her face. Nikolai feels very unpleasantly, but still can no longer be silent.

"I am designated to Washington," stammers he, hastily rushing through the words. "I start to-morrow evening. May I come back in the autumn to--fetch you?"

She starts up. "Me?" cries out she, beside herself. "Me?"

"And who else, then?" he asks, with desperate harshness. "Do you not know that I love you?"

"Me?" she repeats, hesitatingly, and paling.

"Do you then believe that it has seemed to me worth the trouble to look at another girl since I have known you? Oh, love, darling, only one!"

The for years restrained fire of his nature has awakened. Her silence encourages him. He kneels at her feet, draws her hands to his lips. He is no longer the well-bred young diplomat whom Nita had formerly known; he is Lensky's son. More slender, with more finely cut features, his face yet, in the expression, in the kind trace about the mouth, in the violent demand and still tender supplication of his glance, resembles his father's quite mysteriously. It is the same coaxing voice with which Lensky, in his good moods, if he had wished, could have charmed down an angel from heaven; they are the same full, warm lips.

His words she has listened to without moving, but as his lips touch her hands she repulses him with a violent movement.

"Leave me!" she gasps. "Go!"

Dizzily he rises. Such an expression of anxiety, of horror is depicted on her face that his pride is up in arms. "Yet I have said nothing insulting to you," says he, violently, and looks piercingly at her, as if he expected that she would reply something. But as she remains silent, he speaks, with difficulty forcing himself to be calm: "That you refuse my hand is your affair--at heart I was prepared for that; but you shake me off as an impertinent. You extinguish the sun of my life, and do not once tell me that you are sorry for me. Whom, then, have I loved so pa.s.sionately, so boundlessly? The girl who is capable of such horrible treatment I simply did not know!"

His voice sounds harsh, but his eyes still supplicate her, tenderly, despairingly. He cannot believe that all is over, that she will let him leave her thus. She will yet find a friendly word for him as farewell.

She stands silent, resting her hand on the mantel, her eyes turned from him. She wishes to say something, but it does not pa.s.s her lips. Her face is ashy pale; she trembles; dizzily she gropes for a support.

Forgetting all, he makes a step forward to a.s.sist her, to support her.