on our shoulders, and
we go on.--Faster!--Higher!--Leap and prance, and watch the grin
expand.--Ah-h-h-h!--Are the shadows there deep enough, rich enough, do
you think? And are the lips too much a 'thread of scarlet'?--Oh the
opalline lights in that cloud!--How to blend such colors on a
palette?--Nature? She is mocking, too.

"But oh, Irina, I see it now, at last! The dawn--the dawn is here. The
night is gone. I have dreamed, I suppose: ugly dreams.--But they, too,
are done with.--Look, my beloved, it is morning! The first sunbeam
shines there--and is reflected in your dear eyes!" And, lifting his thin
body, arms wide-stretched, eyes a-glitter, Joseph made his last reach
up, after the great sun-shaft he had sought so long:--reached, and so,
with a faint, far cry of satisfaction, had it, and was gone.

Ivan, feeling his way to the window, opened the curtains and looked out
through blurred eyes upon the holy city. The dying man had, indeed,
beheld the day. Yet no sunlight glittered upon the Kremlin domes; only
the velvet blackness of the dark hour had melted, and given place to a
twilight of sullen gray. Then, through the mind of Ivan, exhausted by
the emotions of a sleepless day and night, there shot a pang--not of
sorrow, but of deep, irresistible _envy_, for the man who had passed
away, out of the Russian autumn, into the glory of the everlasting
sun-land.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LION

Before Ivan left the hospital that morning, he had made all arrangements
and provided a generous check for Joseph's funeral. Then, utterly
exhausted, he drove to a quiet hotel, sent a telegram bidding Piotr join
him with necessary clothes, and finally retired. He remained in the city
for four days:--until the interment was over. During that time there
occurred two incidents of which he never afterwards was heard to speak,
but of which the remembrance never left him; for they eventually proved
to be the end of his long and dramatic acquaintance with Irina Petrovna
Lihnoff.

For all the unspeakable heartlessness of her later career, this
many-sided woman showed deep emotion over the tragic end of the man
whose youth and career she had ruined. Ivan recognized the fact that,
even had he not appeared, Joseph would have received every attention,
every aid, while he lived; every honor after his death. And her first
visit to Ivan was to beg that he would allow her to reimburse him, at
least for the funeral just ended. Ivan's refusal w