ced,
worn-looking, plainly dressed woman, seemingly of the lower
middle-class, was Irina Petrovna; finished, now, with the active
degradations of her life; living in a great silence, upon the scanty
savings of her years of mad extravagance. For her, this was to have been
a day of days: a daring expense, to be paid for by the sacrifice of
luncheon and supper, little missed in the joys of anticipation and
memory. Her worn-out emotions had fired again at the dream of meeting
the one man who had for years remained the unshattered idol of her
heart. Her comprehension of his music--life-music as it was--was fuller,
perhaps, than that of the delicate Princess; to whom Ivan's unexpected
absence was but a passing disappointment. She had come down from
Petersburg to hear the symphony; and, since he was evidently not to be
present, she suddenly decided to be the first to carry him the news of
his triumph. As she considered the plan, her excitement grew; and she
resolved to take the train which left at six o'clock for Klin: daring
her cousin to turn her from his inhospitable door in the late evening.

Every one knows what happened at the concert, when, for the first time,
the notes of that matchless symphony fell upon the ears of the world:
when the supreme desolation of the magnificent, crashing retrogression
of the finale held a thousand people in breathless, trembling stillness;
the tears of Ivan's boundless yearning: the passions of the true
_Weldschmerz_ glazing every eye. Accounts of the mad storm of applause
which finally rose into a chorus of shouts for Ivan, are still preserved
in the scrap-books of those who were there. And, though Ivan came not
and the noise was finally stilled, two hours later, when the audience
trooped out into the snowy darkness, but one name was on every lip: one
regret in every heart. Had he but known it, Ivan's act in not coming was
an unconscious but complete revenge for his years of neglect.

At the entrance to the hall the Princess Feodoreff parted from her
astonished hostess, saying that she intended passing the night at the
house of the Grand-Duchess--wife of the Governor-General. And, leaving
her friends appeased by this sufficient but rather unexpected excuse,
Nathalie hurried into a public droschky, and was presently flying
through the streets towards the Petersburg station--and Ivan.

* * * * *

Thus was Ivan finally, and for all time, established in his o