were in the middle of a haunting melody of the
Steppes, arranged by Mily himself, when the sharp exclamation of Ivan
brought a quick silence, and turned every eye towards him:

"I have a message here, my friends.--It is bad news.--I--I must--" he
passed his hand across his brow, and thought for a moment: "I must get
to Moscow to-night, somehow.--A friend--a man, is dying there, in the
Cheremetiev Hospital.--You understand? You forgive me?--It is urgent I
should reach him before the end."

There was the natural chorus of sympathy, regrets, assurances of
understanding. Only Brodsky betrayed a touch of the curiosity which all
felt; for, even to those who knew him best, Ivan's life and connections
had always had about them a suggestion of mystery which made his every
affair an object of unwonted interest to those who knew him. But to
none--not even to Nicholas--did Ivan disclose the identity of the man,
or the exact nature of the agitation that spoke of hidden grief.

He made his preparations quietly; bade good-bye to the friends who,
though they were to sleep at Maidonovo, would be gone before he could
return; and, taking the bag prepared for him by Sosha, hurried out to
the sleigh that awaited him. Seventy minutes after the arrival of the
message, the Petersburg mail thundered into Klin on its way to Moscow.
Ivan, solitary midnight passenger, was put on board, together with the
mail-bags and registered express.

During the two-hour ride through the roaring blackness, Ivan did not
sleep, and scarcely moved. His mind was occupied in going over and over
two scenes of the days before his succession: one, the afternoon on
which a certain starving youth, fed and warmed by him, had told the
story of his struggle for an artistic education; the other, his final
interview, two years later, with that same youth, soiled, then, in mind
and body; sodden with vice; mentally rotten with the knowledge thereof:
the fair god of his ideal dragged from its altar and sold, with all the
rest of his great heritage, for less than a mess of pottage.--Again, as
he neared the city, these memories were augmented by an anticipation:
the imagined picture of the third and last interview he was destined to
have with the tragic boy. Ivan was to get his last glimpse into that
soul to-night. He was going to one who, dying, had called to him from
the depths: Joseph Kashkarin, the Pole.

* * * * *

Dawn had not yet risen.