"It still seems to be the case," said Nikolai, who now, having mastered his unmanly weakness, calmly listened to his father.

"There must be some misunderstanding," says Lensky, thoughtfully.

"Especially as, if your letters told the truth, she did not seem to repel you, but rather encouraged you to repeat your visits to the studio. Tell me--there were always three of you, Sonia was there--what kind of a _role_ did the little prude play between you?"

"What _role_?" Nikolai blushed. "None at all. We were always very pleasant to each other; we love each other quite like brother and sister."

"So! And the other one loves her?"

"She cares for her as the tenderest mother."

"H-m! And she refused you to-day?"

"Yes; how often do you wish to hear it from me? My G.o.d, if she had said a kind word to me, but she fairly drove me away!" Nikolai's eyes sparkle quite angrily; then he adds, slowly, heavily, but speaking plainly: "I let myself be so carried away as to kiss her hand, and she shook me off as if she had a horror of me."

"So; did she? The simpleton! Do you really believe that a girl would so rudely refuse a boy like you if she were quite sure of her heart?

Torment yourself no more, Colia."

"Father!"

"The thing is plain; she sacrifices herself from friendship for Sonia.

You have done a fine thing, you shy lover, you." Lensky laughs. "Never mind, we will set it all right. To-morrow, in the course of the day, I will speak with her, and, if she pleases me--you must grant me that condition, my dear--if she pleases me, then," stretching out both hands to the young man, "what reward shall I obtain if I win your plaything for you?"

Colia did not answer, only buried his long, slender hands in his father's.

"The first kiss of your betrothed, do you hear, the first," jests Lensky. "I will not do it for less. You shall only receive the second."

"Yes, father."

"Fine!" Lensky has risen. "It is almost midnight; go to bed. When do you set out?"

"To-morrow evening at nine, to Calais."

"If I bring you a happy message, will you not concede another twenty-four hours?"

Nikolai only smiles thoughtfully.

"Now be of good courage, you childish fellow; dream the most beautiful dreams, consoled. I will manage my affair well; and I will not tell her that I have seen you weep like a little girl on her account." This he whispers in his ear, while he once more embraces him before retiring.

This evening no one might have dared remind Nikolai of any of the excesses which he had formerly, not without bitterness, reproached his father with. All that had ever offended him in the great artist he had forgotten. To-day he understood the boundless love which his mother, despite all the injuries he had done her, had felt for this man. "What a wonderful man," he murmurs, "what a golden heart!"

He was really a wonderful man in his way, and generously good. Few knew how good he was. Like most prominent men, in the course of his life he had been much calumniated, by no one with more convincing cleverness than by himself. Roused by the flattery which he met everywhere to angry opposition, he ascribed his n.o.blest actions to the lowest motives, and flatly denied every lofty emotion; and, as the Russian national peculiarity of self-depreciation is quite unknown in Western Europe, his listeners took all that he said about himself as plain truth.

But, indeed, he was a thoroughly large-hearted man, and unusually conscientious to his colleagues. One could not charge him with smallness, or any trace of pitiful envy. He had injured few men but himself. He had never crushed a weaker than he in order to take his place, but, on the contrary, was always ready to raise all strugglers and cordially give them his hand.

Bulatow's suicide had deeply concerned him. While Nikolai slept peacefully, Lensky did not close his eyes. Incessantly the thought of the unfortunate whom he had driven from his door the last time he had applied to him for a loan pursued him--the thought of the dead, and of his widow, half mad with grief.

When he joined Nikolai at breakfast the next morning he looked miserably, and the first that he said to his son was: "I have thought over your affair; everything confirms my suspicion. You need have no fear, my poor boy, but you must have a little patience. With the best will I cannot visit her this morning. I must go to this poor Bulatow and see how things are with her, what she will let me do for her; I cannot bear the thought of her misery."

XXIII.

Monday in Whitsun-week. Blue heavens, with slowly piling up storm-clouds, and in all Paris a close, oppressive heat. Toward two o'clock a cab rolls up the Rue Blanche. In the cab sits Mascha, a large bouquet of white roses on her knees. Her blue eyes are strangely staring.

"Is Fraulein von Sankjewitch in her studio?" asks Mascha, of the _concierge_, as she leaves the cab.

"Yes, mademoiselle."

Mascha hesitates a moment, as if she were not prepared for that; then she says: "Give her the roses from--" Just then Nita crosses the sill.

"Ah!" cries she, gayly, "you have come again at last. Please come in."

"No, no," replies Mascha, in great haste and excitement. "I cannot stay; I only wished to bring you the roses--for good-by."

"For good-by. How so?"

"Papa came yesterday, and----"

"You are going away with him." Nita completed the sentence. "Well, they are very beautiful, your roses, but still I will not accept them if you do not come in. You owe me a great many visits, little dove; come in,"

she urges, energetically.

One moment Mascha hesitates, then she accepts the invitation. "Only a moment," she murmurs. "I should like to see your studio once more, a last time, and your new picture. Colia said it is so beautiful."

"See! There it stands on the easel," says Nita, while she arranges the roses in a vase.

Mascha went up to the painting. It represented the corpse of a drowned girl, resting on a bier. Her garments drip with water, and so do the outstretched thin limbs, which make the impression of having been recently taken from the water. All this is painted with wonderfully bold truthfulness, but the charm of the face, the touchingly contented smile of the dead, reconciles the spectator with the painfulness of the subject.

"How did you think of it?" says Mascha, shuddering.

"I saw it in the morgue," explains Nita. "On a Sunday, shortly after the opening of the Salon, we were very gay, Nikolai, Sonia, and I. We went in the morgue, as if in defiance, but when I came out my heart was so full that I felt at once that I would make a picture of it. That is my way of ridding myself of an unpleasant impression."

Mascha stares with wide eyes at the picture. "Who stood model for it?"

murmurs she.

"A little seamstress."

"How content she looks. Do you believe that a dead person can look so satisfied?" Mascha speaks as softly and solemnly as if a true corpse were before her.

"The drowned girl in the morgue had this expression. Besides, I have often noticed it in dead people. Have you never seen a corpse?"

"Never!" says Mascha, shaking her head--"never!"

"Not even your mother?"

"Not even she--I would not. I was afraid." And seizing Nita convulsively by the wrist, she asked breathlessly: "Nita, do you believe that there is a second life after this one?"

If anyone else had asked this question of Nita, she would probably have answered all kinds of things. To the child, evidently tormented by anxiety, she only answered earnestly and simply: "Yes," whereupon she added: "And now come away from the horrid picture. I would not have asked you to look at it if I had not forgotten what a nervous little person you are. Now make yourself comfortable. You will spend the afternoon with me." And Nita wished to take her hat.