ughter.

CHAPTER XV

ENGULFMENT

It was this laugh, or, rather, the chaos of emotions which produced it
as their synthetic culmination, that Ivan carried away from his father's
house. So peculiar had been its tone, that even the soldiers at the gate
who heard it were enabled to surmise something of its meaning. But only
Ivan himself was fully conscious of how perfectly it epitomized the
final disillusionment that had swept away from him the last of his
youth. By that laugh, also, was engendered the mood that now rode him
for many months, and was only thrown at last by means of a desperate
strategy. Nor is that devil-haunted period to be reviewed in a single
phrase.

Anger, disappointment, bitter regret, had driven him back to a
mechanical performance of neglected duties. Thus, presently, his
discarded comrades drew once more about him. Perhaps all save Nicholas
Rubinstein returned at first out of a malicious curiosity; for Moscow
still buzzed about the death of Ternoff; and Ivan's name had got itself
mysteriously coupled with the affair. After their first visit to him
five of his old friends, Laroche, Balakirev, Ostrovsky, Kashkine, and,
inevitably, Nicholas, met together by common impulse to discuss their
brilliant contemporary and the question of their relations with him. The
five of them secretly admired, openly liked him, still. Two of them
loved him, one confessedly. Of the remaining three, one was to become
the closest companion of his famous years. Naturally, then, the
decision arrived at was, that Gregoriev's nature was not to be forced.
Theirs would be the loss should they repudiate him now. When he desired
them, he would find them within call:--this last delicacy being the
suggestion of Rubinstein.

Meantime, Ivan's nature, even in unhappiness, called aloud for solitude.
He must struggle alone through his deep waters: waters of the soul,
wherein float neither life-preserver nor raft, rope or even light;
neither coral reef nor oozy grave, for such as he. Darkness and struggle
alike lasted till the end of his strength; but, with exhaustion and the
coming of dawn, came at last one mighty breaker, by which Ivan was
thrown high upon the strand of a new country.

During the summer of this spiritual woe, Ivan was at Vevey: had
proceeded thither as usual at the beginning of his vacation. He carried
in his pocket a plentiful sum of royalties; and in his brain a hundred
floating ideas. Moreover, the pret