l drapery that
spread, star-fashion, from the statue of the goddess. An hour or two
before Ivan, filled with a vague excitement, had bribed his old nurse to
dress him in his best, and, having seen his mother and his aunt in their
court-dress, he had been seized with the desire for more. After waiting
in his room as long as he could, the boy had stolen down the staircase
to a point whence he could see the progress of that great ball which
was, in some mysterious way, to change the fortunes of his father's
house, and, with them, the long loneliness of his own, dreamy days.

So he crouched there through the hours, well concealed, a figure
unconsciously pathetic, his great, sad eyes--eyes begotten by his
mother, and with all her own woe in their liquid depths--glowing
brightly in the white, wistful, childish face; the suggestion of a smile
on his straight, delicately chiselled mouth. He had been in his place
barely ten minutes when the great doors opened to the first guests; and,
during the hour that followed, they were scarcely shut. The opera was
over. Fashionable Moscow, accustomed to live at night, swathed itself in
furs, and, grumbling at the unwonted distance, had spun across the city,
in open sleighs, to the distant Gregoriev palace.

Prince Michael, with his wife and his sister-in-law beside him, stood at
the entrance to the gold drawing-room, welcoming the men and women who
were announced in rapid succession: men and women whose names set
Sophia's heart beating with memory. There were few, indeed, that any
major-domo in Petersburg would not have shouted in his best voice. For
all of them were members of the great Russian world: Apukhtin and
Mirski, Chipraznik, Smirnoff and the omnipresent Nikitenko--names that
had been the last to fade into, the first to reappear from, the baleful
night of Tatar rule. Not one of them all but had once known Sophia
Blashkov intimately: none but greeted Madame Dravikine as a familiar
acquaintance of to-day. But, for the first time since his wedding-day,
Michael Gregoriev felt himself slighted for that woman he had so long
despised. One and all, women and men alike, they slid by him as rapidly
as decency would permit, nor cared to notice him again, though, from far
corners and discreet retreating-places, they bestowed on him glances
that ran the gamut from curiosity to open horror. Not so did Sophia
fare. There was for her at least one hour when the immediate past was
blotted out, and