forced to understand:
to face black truth. And so, when the time came that even my babies were
beginning to ask me questions about--incidents--and--and persons who
frequented _my house_, I _had_ to come away. I know how the world
regards a runaway wife; yet I believe that I am not universally blamed.
I hope not. But, just now, it is impossible for me to face the world. I
have been alone for some weeks. I came to you to-day just for--just for
companionship, I suppose."

As she paused, Ivan leaned forward and impetuously took her delicately
gloved hand into his firm clasp. But the light that glowed in his eyes,
he wisely managed to conceal. "'Companionship,' Nathalie?--Let us give
it a better term: 'Friendship!' Surely that is permissible now, between
us. Believe me, anything that a man can do, I will do for you. You have
told me far more than I should have asked.--I can never take the place
of--of Madame Dravikine. But I can make you feel, perhaps, that the
world is not utterly lonely for you: that there is some one who is made
happier and better by your mere living presence."

Towards the end, his tone had become slightly uncertain; and Madame
Feodoreff, who was prepared for an emergency, and whose schooling in the
world had been thorough, hastily interposed. Moreover, as she began to
speak, old Piotr entered with an extemporaneous luncheon that did credit
to a purely bachelor establishment. As he set the things down before the
unexpected visitor, she, looking her host squarely in the eye, and with
a manner friendly but quite without sentiment, observed: "You understand
very nicely, Ivan! That, without knowing it, was precisely what I came
to say. Friendship!--It is something that has never yet entered my
life: very probably through my own fault."

Ivan's answer was a smile; for he had no special wish to take advantage
of this opening for banalities. While the Princess ate, therefore, he
played with his knife and fork, and they bandied the necessary phrases
of conventionality while the thoughts of both were busy with intimate
matters. Already Ivan, high-hearted, knew that the long-worshipped image
of the young Nathalie was gone, forever, from the chapel of his mind;
and that, already, in the empty niche, stood the shadow of another form:
one less fairy-like, less bewitching; but more suited to the reverence
of reason, and worthier of the homage he found himself still so ready to
outpour.

Indeed that first visit, s