character of
his new friends; of Irina, her treachery and her remorse; and finally,
incongruity that made the fantasy perfect, over all, through all, there
wound, caressingly, the notes of the little melody that had that
afternoon flowed from his fingers on to Sergius' battered piano:--the
melody which now forms the principal theme of the weirdest of his tone
poems; the "Saturnalia of the Red Death," taken from Poe's wild tale.

At length, while he sat drearily working his numbed fingers, Piotr
entered for the third time and summoned Sergius, away into the inner
room. Before he went, Irina's brother turned his face to his companion
and looked at him; and in that look Ivan read all that the student had
tried to express in it: his remorse, his anguish, his sorrow for the
treachery that had ruined his friend. It was strange how, by that look,
the hearts of both were lightened.

Ivan waited long alone, under the curious eyes of the guard who saw in
him a type very different from that of the usual "political." Even these
men, uneducated as they were, believed, in their hearts, that there was
a mistake somewhere about this fellow. And yet, as for his chances of
release with the great Chief within there--bah! They were not worth the
price of a rusty nail.

In the end it was with an air dogged, half-sullen, half-resentful, that
Ivan, concealing his face by keeping his head bent down, followed his
father's old servitor along the short passage to the closed door of
Prince Michael's cabinet. Immediately there came a word of command from
within. The door was opened, and Ivan was pushed into the room.

It contained only one man, seated at a great work-table covered with
orderly piles of documents. At first sight, the years seemed to have
passed over Michael's head leaving him untouched; but, as Ivan stepped
into the light of a low-hanging lamp, his father gave a sudden start, a
hoarse gasp, and then fell back into his chair again--an old man. Ivan,
though he had been gripping himself for the ordeal, felt himself turn
slowly white, closed his eyes for an instant, and reopened them to meet
the diamond-bright glare of his father's look. At that, moved by a
combination of emotional strain, physical exhaustion, and nervous
tension, he suddenly began to laugh. It was his father who brought him
back to himself again: his father, who sat slowly rubbing one hand
across his brows, and muttering, as one in a daze:

"_Toi!--Toi, Ivan!--Di