child
lowered her eyes, while a furious color dyed her cheeks and neck; and
Ivan could have shouted aloud at what he saw and knew. Confidently he
demanded of her more dances, and more and more. And she granted them
mechanically, neither thinking nor caring for appearances, nor for any
other person in those rooms. She was like one in a dream. Vladimir de
Windt, marvelling at the recklessness of the affair, came once to the
twain, thinking to expostulate with Ivan. But what he saw in the two
faces turned blankly upon him, filled him with such sudden perception
that he stumbled through an excuse, and went off to seek some spot where
he could think; saying to himself, as he went:

"Good God! Who would have believed he could love like that!--and she
also!"

But there were others in those rooms who had not his insight. And it
came finally to the remembrance of Madame Dravikine, in the midst of a
most amusing _tete-a-tete_, that she was no longer a free agent at
balls: that she was chaperoning a daughter who appeared to be alarmingly
unconventional. Leaning upon the arm of her titled companion, Madame
Dravikine went forth to fulfil the first scheme of Ivan's relentless
destiny.

Lieutenant Gregoriev and his cousin had finally retreated to a small and
empty antechamber, where the strains of the distant band came in a soft
echo to their ears. Ivan was leaning forward, in front of the girl,
whose eyes were lowered. A moment before his right hand had closed,
gently, over her own unresisting one; and the words he was speaking
would have been inaudible to any one two yards away. Nathalie was with
him in another world. At her feet, forgotten, lay the camellias, looking
like a splash of blood upon the slippery floor. Ivan's head was swimming
as he talked. But, in the midst of a sentence, he saw his companion give
a great start. Then she snatched her hand from his, pushed him aside,
and rose, unsteadily, her face deathly white. Ivan, noting the flowers,
stooped for them, and, ere he returned them to her, detached one, and
thrust it into the pocket of his uniform. Then he lifted his look to
meet the blazing eyes of his aunt, and the cynical smile of a tall,
gold-laced man, whose breast was covered with orders, and whose mustache
and imperial were known to and hated by all Petersburg; for Prince
Feodoreff was a person whose _penchant_ for feminine youth and beauty
had carried him into many walks of life.

The present little scene w