"Do not lure me on with false hopes, for I am not a boy. Who can give me security that Vera Va.s.silievna will ever...."

"I give you that security."

His eyes shone with grat.i.tude as he took her hand. Tatiana Markovna felt that she had gone too far, and had promised more than she could perform.

She withdrew her hand, and said soothingly: "She is still very unhappy, and would not understand at present. First of all she must be left alone."

"I will wait and hope," he said in a low tone. "If only I might, like Vikentev, call you Grandmother."

She signed to him to leave her. When he had gone she dropped on to her chair, and covered her face with her handkerchief.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Raisky had written to Paulina Karpovna asking her if he might call the next day about one o'clock. Her answer ran: "_Charmee, j'attends...._"

and so on.

He found her in her boudoir in a stifling atmosphere of burning incense, with curtains drawn to produce a mysterious twilight. She wore a white muslin frock with wide lace sleeves, with a yellow dahlia at her breast.

Near the divan was placed a sumptuously spread table with covers for two.

Raisky explained that he had come to make a farewell call.

"A farewell call! I won't hear of such a thing. You are joking, it is a bad joke! No, no! Smile and take back the hated word," she protested, slipping her arm in his and leading him to the table. "Don't think of going away. _Vive l'amour et la joie_."

She invited him with a coquettish gesture to be seated, and hung a table napkin over his coat, as she might to a child. He devoted an excellent morning appet.i.te to the food before him. She poured out champagne for him and watched him with tender admiration.

After a longish pause when she had filled his gla.s.s for the third or fourth time she said: "Well, what have you to say about it?" Then as Raisky looked at her in amazement she continued: "I see, I see! Take off the mask, and have done with concealment."

"Ah!" sighed Raisky, putting his lips to his gla.s.s. They drank to one another's health.

"Do you remember that night," she murmured, "the night of love as you called it."

"How should it fade from my memory," he whispered darkly. "That night was the decisive hour."

"I knew it. A mere girl could not hold you ... _une nullite, cette pauvre pet.i.te fille, qui n'a que sa figure_ ... shy, inexperienced, devoid of elegance."

"She could not. I have torn myself free."

"And have found what you have long been seeking, have you not? What happened in the park to excite you so?"

After a little fencing, Raisky proceeded with his story. "When I thought my happiness was within my grasp, I heard...."

"Tushin was there?" whispered Paulina Karpovna, holding her breath.

He nodded silently, and raised his gla.s.s once more.

"_Dites tout_," she said with a malicious smile.

"She was walking alone, lost in thought," he said in a confidential tone, while Paulina Karpovna played with her watch chain, and listened with strained attention. "I was at her heels, determined to have an answer from her. She took one or two steps down the face of the precipice, when someone suddenly came towards her."

"He?"

"He."

"What did he do?"

"'Good evening, Vera Va.s.silievna,' he said. 'How do you do?' She shuddered."

"Hypocrisy!"

"Not at all. I hid myself and listened. 'What are you doing here?' she said. 'I am spending two days in town,' he said, 'to be present at your sister's fete, and I have chosen that day.... Decide, Vera Va.s.silievna, whether I am to love or not."

"_Ou le sentiment va-t-il se nicher?_" exclaimed Paulina Karpovna.

"Even in that clod."

"'Ivan Ivanovich!' pleaded Vera," continued Raisky. "He interrupted her with 'Vera Va.s.silievna, decide whether to-morrow I should ask Tatiana Markovna for your hand, or throw myself into the Volga!'"

"Those were his words?"

"His very words."

"_Mais, il est ridicule_. What did she do? She moaned, cried yes and no?"

"She answered, 'No, Ivan Ivanovich, give me time to consider whether I can respond with the same deep affection that you feel for me. Give me six months, a year, and then I will answer "yes" or "no."' Your room is so hot, Paulina Karpovna, could we have a little air?"

Raisky thought he had invented enough, and glanced up at his hostess, who wore an expression of disappointment.

"_C'est tout?_" she asked.

"_Oui_," he said. "In any case Tushin did not abandon hope. On the next day, Marfinka's birthday, he appeared again to hear her last word.

From the precipice he went through the park, and she accompanied him. It seems that next day his hopes revived. Mine are for ever gone."

"And that is all? People have been spreading G.o.d knows what tales about your cousin--and you. They have not even spared that saint Tatiana Markovna with their poisonous tongues. That unendurable Tychkov!"

Raisky p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. "They talk about Grandmother?" he asked waveringly.

He remembered the hint Vera had given him of Tatiana Markovna's love story, and he had heard something from Va.s.silissa, but what woman has not her romance? They must have dug up some lie or some gossip out of the dust of forty years. He must know what it was in order to stop Tychkov's mouth.

"What do they say about Grandmother?" he asked in a low, intimate voice.

"_Ah, c'est degoutant_. No one believes it, and everybody is jeering at Tychkov for having debased himself to interrogate a drink-maddened old beggar-woman. I will not repeat it."

"If you please," he whispered tenderly.

"You wish to know?" she whispered, bending towards him. "Then you shall hear everything. This woman, who stands regularly in the porch of the Church of the Ascension, has been saying that Tiet Nikonich loved Tatiana Markovna, and she him."

"I know that," he interrupted impatiently. "That is no crime."