'For goodness sake, Irina, what are you saying? That dress is very nice.... It is dear to me too because I saw you for the first time in it, darling.'

Irina blushed.

'Do not remind me, if you please, Grigory Mihalovitch, that I had no other dress even then.'

'But I a.s.sure you, Irina Pavlovna, it suits you so exquisitely.'

'No, it is horrid, horrid,' she persisted, nervously pulling at her long, soft curls. 'Ugh, this poverty, poverty and squalor! How is one to escape from this sordidness! How get out of this squalor!'

Litvinov did not know what to say, and slightly turned away from her.

All at once Irina jumped up from her chair, and laid both her hands on his shoulders.

'But you love me, Grisha? You love me?' she murmured, putting her face close to him, and her eyes, still filled with tears, sparkled with the light of happiness, 'You love me, dear, even in this horrid dress?'

Litvinov flung himself on his knees before her.

'Ah, love me, love me, my sweet, my saviour,' she whispered, bending over him.

So the days flew, the weeks pa.s.sed, and though as yet there had been no formal declaration, though Litvinov still deferred his demand for her hand, not, certainly, at his own desire, but awaiting directions from Irina (she remarked sometimes that they were both ridiculously young, and they must add at least a few weeks more to their years), still everything was moving to a conclusion, and the future as it came nearer grew more and more clearly defined, when suddenly an event occurred, which scattered all their dreams and plans like light roadside dust.

VIII

That winter the court visited Moscow. One festivity followed another; in its turn came the customary great ball in the Hall of n.o.bility. The news of this ball, only, it is true, in the form of an announcement in the _Political Gazette_, reached even the little house in Dogs' Place. The prince was the first to be roused by it; he decided at once that he must not fail to go and take Irina, that it would be unpardonable to let slip the opportunity of seeing their sovereigns, that for the old n.o.bility this const.i.tuted indeed a duty in its own way. He defended his opinion with a peculiar warmth, not habitual in him; the princess agreed with him to some extent, and only sighed over the expense; but a resolute opposition was displayed by Irina. 'It is not necessary, I will not go,'

she replied to all her parents' arguments. Her obstinacy reached such proportions that the old prince decided at last to beg Litvinov to try to persuade her, by reminding her among other reasons that it was not proper for a young girl to avoid society, that she ought to 'have this experience,' that no one ever saw her anywhere, as it was. Litvinov undertook to lay these 'reasons' before her. Irina looked steadily and scrutinisingly at him, so steadily and scrutinisingly that he was confused, and then, playing with the ends of her sash, she said calmly:

'Do you desire it, you?'

'Yes.... I suppose so,' replied Litvinov hesitatingly. 'I agree with your papa.... Indeed, why should you not go ... to see the world, and show yourself,' he added with a short laugh.

'To show myself,' she repeated slowly. 'Very well then, I will go....

Only remember, it is you yourself who desired it.'

'That's to say, I----.' Litvinov was beginning.

'You yourself have desired it,' she interposed. 'And here is one condition more; you must promise me that you will not be at this ball.'

'But why?'

'I wish it to be so.'

Litvinov unclasped his hands.

'I submit ... but I confess I should so have enjoyed seeing you in all your grandeur, witnessing the sensation you are certain to make.... How proud I should be of you!' he added with a sigh.

Irina laughed.

'All the grandeur will consist of a white frock, and as for the sensation.... Well, any way, I wish it.'

'Irina, darling, you seem to be angry?'

Irina laughed again.

'Oh, no! I am not angry. Only, Grisha....' (She fastened her eyes on him, and he thought he had never before seen such an expression in them.) 'Perhaps, it must be,' she added in an undertone.

'But, Irina, you love me, dear?'

'I love you,' she answered with almost solemn gravity, and she clasped his hand firmly like a man.

All the following days Irina was busily occupied over her dress and her coiffure; on the day before the ball she felt unwell, she could not sit still, and twice she burst into tears in solitude; before Litvinov she wore the same uniform smile.... She treated him, however, with her old tenderness, but carelessly, and was constantly looking at herself in the gla.s.s. On the day of the ball she was silent and pale, but collected. At nine o'clock in the evening Litvinov came to look at her. When she came to meet him in a white tarlatan gown, with a spray of small blue flowers in her slightly raised hair, he almost uttered a cry; she seemed to him so lovely and stately beyond what was natural to her years. 'Yes, she has grown up since this morning!' he thought, 'and how she holds herself! That's what race does!' Irina stood before him, her hands hanging loose, without smiles or affectation, and looked resolutely, almost boldly, not at him, but away into the distance straight before her.

'You are just like a princess in a story book,' said Litvinov at last.

'You are like a warrior before the battle, before victory.... You did not allow me to go to this ball,' he went on, while she remained motionless as before, not because she was not listening to him, but because she was following another inner voice, 'but you will not refuse to accept and take with you these flowers?'

He offered her a bunch of heliotrope. She looked quickly at Litvinov, stretched out her hand, and suddenly seizing the end of the spray which decorated her hair, she said:

'Do you wish it, Grisha? Only say the word, and I will tear off all this, and stop at home.'

Litvinov's heart seemed fairly bursting. Irina's hand had already s.n.a.t.c.hed the spray....

'No, no, what for?' he interposed hurriedly, in a rush of generous and magnanimous feeling, 'I am not an egoist.... Why should I restrict your freedom ... when I know that your heart----'

'Well, don't come near me, you will crush my dress,' she said hastily.

Litvinov was disturbed.

'But you will take the nosegay?' he asked.

'Of course; it is very pretty, and I love that scent. _Merci_--I shall keep it in memory----'

'Of your first coming out,' observed Litvinov, 'your first triumph.'

Irina looked over her shoulder at herself in the gla.s.s, scarcely bending her figure.

'And do I really look so nice? You are not partial?'

Litvinov overflowed in enthusiastic praises. Irina was already not listening to him, and holding the flowers up to her face, she was again looking away into the distance with her strange, as it were, overshadowed, dilated eyes, and the ends of her delicate ribbons stirred by a faint current of air rose slightly behind her shoulders like wings.

The prince made his appearance, his hair well becurled, in a white tie, and a shabby black evening coat, with the medal of n.o.bility on a Vladimir ribbon in his b.u.t.tonhole. After him came the princess in a china silk dress of antique cut, and with the anxious severity under which mothers try to conceal their agitation, set her daughter to rights behind, that is to say, quite needlessly shook out the folds of her gown. An antiquated hired coach with seats for four, drawn by two s.h.a.ggy hacks, crawled up to the steps, its wheels grating over the frozen mounds of unswept snow, and a decrepit groom in a most unlikely-looking livery came running out of the pa.s.sage, and with a sort of desperate courage announced that the carriage was ready.... After giving a blessing for the night to the children left at home, and enfolding themselves in their fur wraps, the prince and princess went out to the steps; Irina in a little cloak, too thin and too short--how she hated the little cloak at that moment!--followed them in silence.

Litvinov escorted them outside, hoping for a last look from Irina, but she took her seat in the carriage without turning her head.

About midnight he walked under the windows of the Hall of n.o.bility.

Countless lights of huge candelabra shone with brilliant radiance through the red curtains; and the whole square, blocked with carriages, was ringing with the insolent, festive, seductive strains of a waltz of Strauss'.

The next day at one o'clock, Litvinov betook himself to the Osinins'. He found no one at home but the prince, who informed him at once that Irina had a headache, that she was in bed, and would not get up till the evening, that such an indisposition was however little to be wondered at after a first ball.