d
have been a girl. Later, as Ivan began to emerge a little from utter
childishness, his father had resorted occasionally to his school-room to
search the little dweller there for certain longed-for signs of
temperament. Not finding them, he once more put his son away, this time
furiously raging that he should have been given a Blashkov heir.
Nevertheless, because Ivan was his all, and because the Prince, to his
own discomfiture, found himself constantly building careers for a
successor, there came again a day when his wild heart turned one last
time towards the boy, and, calculating his age, he was astonished to
find that his son had passed the first year of his teens.

That summer--the summer of 1854--Madame Gregoriev, Ivan, and Ludmillo
had spent at the Princess' favorite country-place, the tiny estate of
Maidonovo, near Klin. Here, in the spot where she had fewest memories of
the man whose name she bore, Sophia found that she could, for a few
weeks, rally from the weakness, the premonitory pain and its
accompanying dread which had lately found definite place in her life.
Here the summer skies were of Italian blue; the bells rang through air
liquidly golden, perfumed, rich with the murmur of insect life. And here
the three, mother, son, and their quiet companion, walked the
country-side, watching, first, the hurried sowing, fostering and reaping
of the brief-seasoned crops, and then the mad Russian festivals which
terminate the frightful summer labor. This year marked itself especially
in Ivan's mind; because it was the first in which he began to be haunted
by unremembered harmonies and melodies that throbbed again and again
across his brain till he would rush, in a frenzy, to the piano, and play
them swiftly away as one ridding himself of a torment. And it was at
this time rather a misery to him than a delight that, within a few
hours, they were always back again, driving him to continued pondering
over strange mysteries of tone.

It was the end of September before the little party returned to Moscow,
driven thither by premonitions of swift-approaching winter. A fortnight
more, and, on the seventh of the month, Ivan would enter his fifteenth
year. But it was three days before his birthday when the incident
occurred which prepared him for its unusual celebration. For while, at
dusk on the evening of the fourth day of the month, Ivan sat alone in
his music-room, he was approached by Piotr and silently conducted acros