can do nothing,
thank you. Leonie for me, old Kasha for the children--they do
everything.--We leave the Petersburg station at five. Come then, if you
will, to say good-bye to the little girls. Our au revoir must be here."

"Au revoir!" echoed Ivan, his voice gleaming.

Madame Feodoreff smiled, rather sadly. "Ah, Ivan, whatever my answer to
you, tell me that I shall have your friendship still! It is the most
precious thing that is left me, excepting my children. I cannot afford
to lose you as my friend.--Promise!" and she held out her hand.

He took it, quietly. "I promise, dear lady of my life."

"Then, again--au revoir!"

"But soon.--_Soon!_"

He was gone; but, though she yielded to her impulse and ran to the
window to look after him, he walked away without once turning his head.

* * * * *

That night, when he returned alone to his empty house, after bidding his
world good-bye at the Petersburg station, he perceived at once that the
Moscow around him was but a wilderness, and his great palace a prison.
Thenceforward he was to exist only in the consciousness of waiting: his
faith in her promise that she would torture him not a moment longer than
she must. But, as the days passed, logic, calm, even reason, forsook
him, till no lover of twenty-one was ever in sorer plight than he. Truly
Nathalie herself could hardly have guessed the depths to which she had
plunged this quiet and self-centred man. She had, nevertheless, the
consideration to keep her word. It was but eleven days after her
departure, nine after the funeral of her husband, before Ivan found
himself shut alone into that room where she had first greeted him,
holding her answer in his visibly trembling hands.--A moment.--A long
sigh.--It was open.

"78 KERZONSKAIA, ST. PETERSBURG,

"_Tuesday, January 9th_, 11 P.M.

"DEAR COUSIN:--Since our last talk together in far-away Moscow, the
consciousness of you and of your question have been always with me.
To-night I have been sitting here, alone in my boudoir, for two
hours, trying, desperately, to _think_. I have wished to give
myself fair opportunity for finding out my real mind; but,
miserable thing that I am! the real _I_ will not respond.

"Ivan, my husband has been buried a week and a day! True, for years
my tie to him was bondage. I have, to-night, a far tenderer feeling
for you than I can remember ever having felt for him