"Come in!" calls he, harshly.

A tall, slender man, dressed in the latest fashion, enters. Valerian Kyrillowitch Kasin, Sonia's father.

"What joy to meet you here in Paris!" he says to the virtuoso. "We two have enjoyed life together here in our time, you and I!"

"Yes, very much," murmurs Lensky.

"What an atmosphere!" raves Kasin. "It goes to one's head like champagne. I am intoxicated, fairly intoxicated. Guess whom I found again in Paris--our Senta, from Vienna."

"I have no idea whom you mean," says Lensky, with poorly concealed uneasiness.

"The charming girl whose acquaintance we made at the Njikitjin's in Vienna. We named her Senta, because she fell in love with your picture, Boris, quite like the Wagnerian enthusiast with the picture of the Flying Dutchman. I scarcely knew that she had another name."

"It is unbearably close here," murmurs Lensky, and pulls at his collar.

"Please open the window, Nikolai."

Nikolai does so, and remains standing near the window.

"I do not remember," says Lensky.

"Really, you do not remember? But, _a propos_, if it does not inconvenience you, could you lend me one or two thousand francs? I have already telegraphed to St. Petersburg."

"I beg you, Nikolai, take two thousand-franc notes from the desk in my bed room. Here is the key."

Nikolai takes the key and goes in the adjoining room, the door of which, as his father notices not without vexation, he leaves open.

"So you no longer remember her!" goes on Kasin. "That is incomprehensible to me; you were quite wild about her, enthusiastic. I had never seen you thus before about a girl. I met her one evening at Njikitjin's, only one evening, but I remember her very well. She had, indeed, no incense for me; she saw and heard at that time nothing but Lensky. You must remember her. They called her Senta in the Njikitjin set."

"Have you found the money, Colia?" calls Lensky, irritably, to his son.

"At once, father. The lock is rusty. I--I made a mistake in the key."

"Now her name is Fraulein von Sankjewitch, and she is the most intimate friend of my daughter," explains Kasin. "The strangest of all is that she has never said a word about you to Sonia. Young girls usually tell each other everything. And, as she fainted last winter at one of your concerts, she has evidently not forgotten you. And you, ungrateful one, is it really worth while to please you--to please you thus? All the music-mad ladies were beside themselves with jealousy. Besides--who knows?--if you see her again she will turn your head once more. She is more charming than ever, greatly changed, but grown prettier."

Then Nikolai enters and brings the money. Soon after, Kasin leaves.

Nikolai politely accompanies him to the door, which he locks behind him. In what he now has to discuss with his father he does not wish to be disturbed.

"So that was it--that," he says, slowly, as he goes up to Lensky.

"I do not understand what you mean," stammers Lensky, uneasily, but his eyes fall before the accusing glance of his son.

For a short moment deep silence rules. The blood has rushed to the virtuoso's face. He breathes heavily; wishes to say something, but does not bring it out.

"You have guessed!" cries out Nikolai. "But it was only a trifle! It was six years ago--she was a child at that time, a child intoxicated with music, irresponsible from enthusiasm. One must not be too severe!

Ah!" with a hoa.r.s.e groan. "Still, it is all the same, and you were right, and I was a fool!" He hurries out. Then a heavy hand seizes him by the shoulder.

"Colia, stay!" cries Lensky.

"Father!"

"It is not as you think," says Lensky, slowly, raising his bowed head.

He is now deathly pale.

"So it was only mere gossip on Kasin's part?" says Nikolai. "You have never seen her, or, at least, she never pleased you?"

Lensky shakes his ma.s.sive head. "Yes, she pleased me," said he, hoa.r.s.ely, "very much; in that Kasin spoke the truth. She pleased me indescribably. There was something unusual about her, something warmer, more natural than the others, and such a peculiar way of looking at one, as you know. I thought--but I was mistaken." He pauses.

"Well, father?" Nikolai urges.

"One evening I found her alone," murmurs Lensky, scarce audibly.

"Njikitjin had arranged it so. Oh! the lowness, the commonness of such a woman, who will flatter one at any price! I lost my head. She did not at first understand me--I thought it was affectation. Must you know all?"

"Yes!"

"Well"--Lensky gasps the words more than speaks them--"I was like a wild animal. She cried for help. I heard some one come, fortunately for her. And I was as frightened as a thief, and left. Now, have you heard enough?" he fairly screams, and stamps on the floor.

Lensky is silent. Nikolai's face is ashy, as that of a man whose heart has ceased beating with horror.

"Now I know why she shrank from me," says he, dully, without looking at his father. Then he leaves him.

XXV.

At the same hour Maschenka stands before the clock in her room and counts the strokes--"One, two, three, four, five. It must be now," says she to herself. "It must be now."

It must be. Slowly but surely and overpoweringly has the conviction mastered her. At first it was only an uneasy anxiety, but then an iron command.

She has fought against it with all the wild, rebellious horror which a very young person feels at the thought of death. She will not--she will not! But at length despair and a daily increasing weariness have strengthened the decision. "Yes, it must be."

How shall she accomplish it? Poison? No; she will go out of the world some way so that no one shall ever find her who knew her. And in the short spring nights she matures a plan, slyly carried out as only such a romantic little brain could think of.

All is ready.

She has granted herself the respite until her father's return, and for this reason she is frightened instead of pleased to see him again. It seemed to her that the executioner appeared to her and said: "Come, it is time!"

How good he was to her! What a beautiful future he planned for her! A black wall towers before her--there is no future.

One, two, three, four, five, six! The hour is here. She undresses; not any garment which can be recognized as hers will she keep on, but changes everything for articles which she has gradually purchased.

If she is washed ash.o.r.e, no one shall suspect that the girl in the plain working-clothes might be the petted daughter of Boris Lensky.

Then she takes her mother's pearls, which she has not worn for a long time, from her jewel box, and kisses them. She kneels down before her holy picture, and prays.

Now she rises; a last time she slowly looks round her pretty room. Her heart beats to bursting.

"Eliza, tell aunt that she need not expect me to dinner to-day," she calls to the maid through the closed door of the adjoining room. "I shall dine with papa."