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But I will not never! for that creature!" Irina's eyes blazed and her voice grew vibrant with passionate anger. "Pardon, Lieutenant. I will try to tell the story quietly, now. You must know that we are very poor. My mother is dead; my brother in Moscow; and I was left to keep the three rooms that my father could afford to rent with his wages from the orchestra and the few lessons he gives.
Dull stupefaction, and thoughts scurrying like mice, vague terror, and the numbness of expectation and the weight of crushed tears in his heavy-laden breast, on his lips the forced, empty smile, and a meaningless prayer addressed to no one.... As he walked down the street his servant touched him on the shoulder, handing him a note. He recognised Irina's writing.
They thought to drive him from his friendships by malicious, anonymous calumny, then? calumny of a body of poverty-stricken, half-starved men, working disinterestedly for the sake of science, ah! That was a generous thing to do! As for Irina's letter, well, she had all a woman's inconsistencies and whims. She had got some silly notion of pride in her now. By Heaven!
At length, while he sat drearily working his numbed fingers, Piotr entered for the third time and summoned Sergius, away into the inner room. Before he went, Irina's brother turned his face to his companion and looked at him; and in that look Ivan read all that the student had tried to express in it: his remorse, his anguish, his sorrow for the treachery that had ruined his friend.
Irina's voice broke off on an upper note, but she remained on her chair, petrified by some powerful emotion that singularly resembled terror. Her brother and his friends were, less conspicuously, in the same state. But Ivan proved himself admirable.
Even Yevgeny, who had finished his zakouski and liqueur, pushed his broth away to listen undisturbed; and the footmen, with a change of plates, stole about the room on tiptoe. Irina's voice, nearing the climax of the solo, soared higher and fuller; while Ivan, with sparkling eyes, awaited the moment when he should lead the others into the rousing chorus that terminated the song.
That night, after Ivan's recovery from his fainting-fit, Irina's brother, Sergius, had, on request of the young composer, given Ivan the address in the student quarter where he and his sister were living. Old Petrov was dead.
Her appearance corresponded with the garment; for Irina's dramatic instinct for effect was unfailing; and, penniless and debt-laden though she was, no Duchesse of St.-Germain could have surpassed her now in beauty and in chic. As she entered the room and seated herself on the couch with a manner and a smile that affected him powerfully, a great discouragement came upon the man.
Without preface, and without apology, Ivan began his story, which he told baldly, with harsh stress upon his own deliberate folly. Only one omission did he make: and that was one demanded of him by the past. Irina's name never appeared in the narrative; and, as he went on, the hope that she might be successfully shielded throughout, grew large within him.
His mind was a blind chaos of mingled emotion and desire: the new-born anxiety concerning his profession; the powerful fascination exerted by the mere presence of the woman he loved; and, lastly, a selfishly inconsistent anger that Irina's act had forced him at last to the long-desired point of decision.
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