ur Rubinstein--would, at all points,
be rivalled!" finished Zaremba, with a dry, malicious grin.

Rubinstein stopped perfectly still, and maintained a quivering silence
till the speech was concluded. But his two hands were clinched, so that
the nails turned suddenly blue. Zaremba, seeing this, was about to make
an explanation in a very different key, when Anton, in the harsh
raucousness that serves one who is restraining violent profanity, almost
whispered: "You will have the goodness, then, Monsieur Zaremba, either
to send me, in the morning, reparation to the amount of--or stay! shall
we, after all, publish those little letters from your friend the Lady of
the Dyna--"

"Good God! Anton! Surely, surely I'm too useful to you!--Surely you
understood my little joke, did you not?--Bah! This whiffet of a
Gregoriev! Why, if his stuff contains anything of any value whatever, he
has stolen it all from what he has seen of your unpublished
works!--I--I--"

Rubinstein burst into a peal of laughter; and yet, well as he understood
all that this bald flattery stood for, it pleased him:--pleased him,
coming from a man whom, years before, in a fit of unwonted generosity,
he had saved from usury and blackmail: from one of those Jews who, then
as now, infested Petersburg and terrorized men of standing from the very
imperial family down. Anton had bought Zaremba's wretched debt, and the
half-dozen innocent love-letters from a young girl who afterwards became
an active Nihilist. And yet Anton Rubinstein, genius, jovial winer and
diner, victim of the devils of envy and jealousy, had actually stooped,
more than once, to threaten blackmail to the man whom he knew, in his
heart, to have been guilty of nothing more than a week's unfortunate
gambling, and an early attachment to a girl who had not returned his
affection in kind!

Once more, as usual, the pianist won his point; but it took two hours
before he would allow Zaremba, his remnant of a conscience once more
deadened by the combined forces of Rubinstein's magnetism, covert
threats, and golden wine, to leave.

The result of their talk bore immediate fruit. Late in the afternoon of
the 11th, Ivan Gregoriev sat once more at his bedroom table, and very
slowly, with white face and hands that shook, drew from his coat-pocket
the letter which he had received at the post-office half an hour before,
but had been unable to open on the way. Now, after a moment's fumbling,
he cut the envelope,