r!" cried she
to the baron, but she understood immediately that what had taken
place was neither new, nor a rare thing, but as old as the human
race and as vulgar as the street is. The tailor's shop full of
people, the ceaseless ringing at the door-bell, the noise of
selling and buying, the passage beyond the window--is the street.
A kiss received on the street. Street adventure! A quiver shot
downward through her shoulders. Before her imagination passed the
wretched forms of women trailing in the dusk of evening along the
sidewalks. On her inclined face a blush came out; that painted
pot called maiden, modesty, under the form of inherited instinct
and woman's pride, was laboring in her untiringly and painfully.
After a while its place was taken by disgust beyond expression.

The baron, whose single charm was in his subtlety, appeared now
as a vulgar figure. That kind of mutual love, which she had
thought they felt for each other, when closely analyzed, reminded
her of pictures in which Fauns with goats' beards were chasing
through the forest after Nymphs. On Irene's lips a jeering,
almost angry smile, now fixed itself. What did he say: "a sixth
sense." Why a sixth sense in this case? Empty words! The baron
jeers at painted pots, but he makes them himself, and paints them
in the ancient colors. An idyl is an old thing, and a den is old
also, but the idyl would be better than the den if only it
existed. But where is it? Her eyes had never seen an idyl, but
they had seen, ah, they had seen what happens and takes place
with loves of men and women, 'and with bonds which bear the name
of sacred! Well, what is to be done with the baron--and America?
Such contempt for everything, such disbelief in all things, such
a contemptuous despising of everything, and of her own self as
well, embraced her and possessed her, that at the end of the
meditation she said to herself: "It is all one!" She crossed her
hands and pressed them firmly across her breast, bent her head
somewhat, and thought: "It is all, all, all one!"

A few tears, one after another, fell on her tightly clasped
fingers. "All one! If only the sooner!"

What sooner? Why sooner? With a slow movement she turned her face
toward her mother's apartments; her lips which quivered, and the
glistening tear which had fallen on them had the same kind of
expression that a child has when crying in silence. With brows
raised somewhat, she whispered:

"Mamma!"

After a while,