When he returned once more to his rooms, he made a desperate effort to
recover his senses. Taking out a picture of Tatyana, he placed it in
front of him, and stared at it long and eagerly. Suddenly he pushed it
gently away, and clutched his head in both hands.

"All is at an end," he whispered at last. "Irina! Irina!"

He realised in an instant that he was irrevocably, senselessly, in love
with her.

"But Tatyana, Tatyana, my guardian, Tatyana, Tatyana!" he repeated,
while Irina's shape, as he had seen her last, rose before his eyes with
a radiant calm of victory on her marble-white face.

Next day he told her of his love. For answer she threw her arms round
his neck and whispered in his ear, "I love you, too.... I love you...
and you know it."

"You must go," she went on suddenly, moving away from him and turning
impulsively toward the door. "It's dangerous, it's terrible....
Good-bye."

Litvinov stood, like a block of wood, at a distance. Once more she said,
"Good-bye, forget me," and, without looking round, rushed away.

As he left the hotel, like a man in a fog, he passed Ratmirov on the
stairs. The general lifted his hat unnecessarily high, and wished him a
very good day in a voice which was obviously ironical.

He hardly responded to Ratmirov's bow, but rushed back to his lodgings.
His head was turning round, and his heart vibrating like a harp-string.
He tried to pull himself together. He would fly from her. "If I die for
it," he muttered to himself. He packed his bag and trunk with furious
energy, determined to go that very night. As he was in the midst of his
preparations, a note was brought him from Irina.

"Sooner or later," she wrote, "it must have been. My life is in your
hands. If necessary, I will throw up everything and follow you to the
ends of the earth. We shall see each other to-morrow, of course. Your
Irina."

Two hours later he was sitting in his room on the sofa. His box stood in
the corner, open and empty.

_III--A Ruined Life_

Tatyana and her aunt arrived the following day at twelve o'clock.
Litvinov was at the station to meet them--a different Litvinov from the
one who a few days before had been so self-confident, so spiritual, so
calm and content. His whole appearance, his movements, the expression of
his face, had been transformed. Some sensation, unknown before, had
come, strong, sweet--and evil; the mysterious guest had made its way to
the innermost shrine, and taken po