ly, something of his state of thought.
Woman though she was, however, she was unprepared for his first action,
which, as it were, threw a search-light upon the sole idea into which
the confusion eventually resolved itself.

Ceasing his walk he went swiftly to her, took her two hands, drew them
protectively to his breast, and said, huskily: "You are in great
trouble, Nathalie.--You are unhappy.--Is it--tell me!--is it grief for
_him_?"

Before the clearness of his look, her own went down. A faint color crept
into her cheeks. For one moment she hesitated; but finally rose to his
own height of honesty.

"No, Ivan, I cannot grieve for the man who deliberately wrecked my
youth, debased my thoughts, lowered me for years in my own eyes.--Do you
expect it?--It seems to me that, just now, I am feeling nothing. But I
know already that I am _going_ to suffer.--I shall suffer remorse! I,
who have been so proud of my long forbearance, shall suffer for these
last weeks as if I had left him years ago, without provocation!--He is
dead; and I was not with him at the end.--He died in his bed.--They tell
me it was his heart. He had had trouble with it before, and they had
warned him against dissipation; for he was an old man.--But he heeded no
one.--And he asked for me, at the end, and I was not there!--_That_ is
what I shall suffer for. After all those long years of enduring, I left
him to die alone.--Alone: my husband!"

"Nathalie!"

The Princess started at the note of agony in Ivan's voice.

"Nathalie! You are not to suffer for that brute:--that brute who drove
you here--drove you to me!" Still retaining the two hands, which she had
not tried to make him relinquish, he suddenly sank upon one knee before
her, so bringing his head nearly on a level with her own. Then,
oblivious of all things else, he began to pour out his heart to her:
"Nathalie, that first time, years ago, that you came to Moscow--the
time of my mother's death, I forgot my heart-break over her, in you.
Even then I loved you, utterly. You were the angel of all my wretched
cadet days. Then, years later, when I came to know you a little, my love
became the passion of a young man, and it finally swept me into a gulf
of desolation. But no wrong could really come through you; and what then
seemed ruin, showed itself, in the end, the opportunity of my life. It
drove me to what I could not have done alone. Through you I found my
work.

"That is long ago, Nathalie; and