et
on Vassily Island. Help was not proffered. But never again did Michael
lose sight of the young man.

In the succeeding years, the Prince watched the growing career of his
son with a mingled passion of anger, pride, humiliation, relief, and a
mighty, uncontrollable eagerness. As, slowly, wearily, beset with every
difficulty, Ivan climbed, round by round, the ladder of his chosen
profession, his father noted his progress far more accurately than he
himself. And when at last Michael was forced to realize that the younger
Gregoriev had come to a distinction almost as marked as, and infinitely
more respected than, his own, the grim-souled Prince felt himself torn
by an almost unbearable emotion, half delight, half remorseful pain.
For, all unconsciously, the musician stood a living reproach to the
father whose ambition had found no better road to celebrity than that of
trickery, dishonesty, blackmail,--all-unscrupulousness; while the boy,
by personal sacrifice and hard and honorable labor, had reached the same
end many years earlier.

A pity, perhaps, that his father's inmost heart should have gone forever
unfathomed by Ivan. But deep down in the son's nature lay the sting of
Michael's desertion in the hour of his great need. That strange
interview held between them on the night of the students' capture, had
done no more to soften the relationship between them than had the money
sent to Ivan on one or two occasions when it had not been greatly
needed. As to the interview, indeed, it was only Ivan who came out
unscathed; for the ring of Ivan's laugh--that cruel laugh which Michael
had understood far better than Ivan himself--sounded for many a month in
the official's ears; and for a time he denied himself his greatest, but
unacknowledged, delight. For three months he kept away from the opera on
Ivan's nights, thereby suffering incredibly.

Many another incident showing the possibility of reconciliation between
the two might be recounted; but none brought result; and, in fact, till
the very end, a mocking fate kept the two apart.

In the January of 1872, Michael Gregoriev entered upon his
seventy-fourth year. Up to this time he had held his age back in the
leash of an iron will. Death was, to him, the one unconquerable terror;
and he was determined to hold it off as long as human mortality might.
To the danger of personal attack in which he hourly dwelt, he was
absolutely indifferent. But with the least suggestion of ph