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A faint flush crept over Ivan's face; but he waived the speech gravely, and renewed the question. "I do want to know, Vladimir; because I have a suspicion as to her identity. And and if it should be the one I fear, by Heaven I've a plan that may help us! Tell me her name!" "Zedarovsky says that it was Irina Petrovna, the singer."
Sergius gave the excuse so pleasantly, in a manner so engagingly frank, that Ivan readily accepted it, nor noticed how fixedly Irina was staring down into her plate, while the four other young men sat in moody silence, their faces this their host did perceive looking singularly pallid and drawn.
Charlatans among the leaders of the new thought, and society dilettantism, both came under his merciless lash. In his opinion the men and ideas in the two camps are no more than smoke dirty, evil-smelling smoke. The entire atmosphere is gloomy, and throughout is only relieved by the character of Irina, the most exquisite piece of feminine psychology in the whole range of Turgenev's novels.
Now, also, was the time when young blood rushes like sap through the veins, and artists' dreams turn, irresistibly, to the greatest of their subjects. On such a day it was that Joseph Kashkarin and Irina Petrovna came for the first time face to face. Irina's reappearance in the city of her brother's fall, was made a year or more after the battle in the Akheskaia.
For the third or fourth time, Irina had failed in her appointment, and Joseph, sitting alone, waiting for the sound of her step, had drifted into a reverie concerning himself and his summer's work. He was kneeling in the midst of a dusty little group of last year's studies, regarding them with newly contemplative eyes.
Oh, my dear one, think me a weak, worthless woman, despise, but don't abandon me, don't abandon your Irina.... To leave this life I have not the courage, but live it without you I cannot either. Come soon to me. I shall not have an instant's peace until I see you. Yours, yours, yours I."
Finally, aloud: "But Irina! I want Irina, you know." For answer, Ivan took the broken man by the arm and put him into a chair. Then he said, very gently: "When did you eat last, Joseph?" "Eat!" The upturned face, with its varnished eyes, gleamed ghostlike in the yellow light. "This morning I " "You've been at the 'Masque' all day?" "Oh, you see, I you know she needs a great deal.
The contrast between these two women, who instinctively understand each other immediately and the struggle of each for the soul of the hero, shows Turgenev at his best. It is remarkable, too, how clearly the reader sees the heart of the man, so obscure to himself; and how evident it is that in the very midst of his passion for Irina, his love for Tanya remains.
In a few minutes he was with Irina, holding her in his arms. "I can't live without you, Irina," he whispered; "I am yours for ever and always. I can only breathe at your feet." He stooped down, all in a tremble, to kiss her hand. Irina gazed at his bent head. "Then let me say that I, too, am ready for anything; that I, too, will consider no one and nothing. As you decide, so it shall be.
And the very waiters winked, solemnly, outside the salon door, as they served early coffee and, later, an elaborate déjeuner, to the two within. But Ivan could meet any eye calmly. And if Irina marvelled, she said nothing. Only, from this time forth, Ivan occupied, in her secret soul, a niche of his own, far above that of any other man.
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