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Updated: June 1, 2025
Well, I'll wait." He stumbled backward into the chair, again; but Ivan stood close before him, his face now as white as Joseph's own. "Irina is not at a restaurant. She left these rooms early this afternoon, and took her things with her." And, as he spoke, Ivan stiffened his every muscle, and instinctively clinched his hands. For the moment, Joseph stared, stupidly.
Thus they entered upon the eight-and-forty hours that were to prepare the storm of the next meeting which was to set upon them both the seal of the inevitable. Well for Prince G that there came to him no inkling of the scene which ended that second afternoon! Irina lay back upon the artist's couch in the dreamy languor of her most dangerous mood.
Petersburg, and even the Czar himself, had commented upon her beauty. But Irina herself he did not see. She had a bad headache, the prince explained. The following day he was again denied a sight of her, and as he turned once more from the house he saw a great personage drive up in a magnificent carriage. A dread foreboding seized him.
He rose to his feet, somehow took leave of Irina and her husband, and walked rapidly away, trying to brace and soothe his nerves by violent exercise. "Oh, Tatyana, Tatyana!" he cried passionately to himself. "You are my guardian angel! you only my good genius! I love you only, and will love you for ever, and I will not go to see her. Forget her altogether! Let her amuse herself with her generals."
Again, however, he underrated the man to whom he spoke. He had finished, and silence had reigned for perhaps ten seconds, when Gregoriev said, a little impatiently: "But the woman! Lihnoff's sister, Irina, who has managed to get away from my fools for the moment? Where is she, Ivan? You owe her one turn for dragging you into your disgrace six years ago. Give me the information, and you shall go."
One of the young generals, Ratmirov by name, almost the most elegant of all, got up from his seat at the introduction, and bowed with a dandified air. Litvinov would have escaped, but Irina insisted on his sitting down. For a time he had to listen to the empty, meaningless talk of the company, hardly able to say a word to Irina. At last his clean plebeian pride revolted.
The well-known, silken swish of skirts, a breath of the familiar perfume of gown and hair and person, and then Irina an Irina unfamiliar had entered, shut and bolted the door behind her, stared at him for a moment, and then began to weep, hysterically. "You! But Irina I you. But there is no light for the pose now!" "Ah, mon Dieu! A sitting! Pouf! Listen, mon cher! It has come.
There could be no doubt about the marvel of Joseph's present technique. Yet, for all that, he had already lost something of his former purity of style. And now, for six long months, he worked at nothing but studies of the same subject; knowing only the criticisms of Irina herself. The days of honest labor and study, the earnest self-criticism and self-examination, were gone.
Irina had no difficulty in hiding from Sergius just how much the hope meant to her; but there was no idea of concealing the same thing from herself. As the days passed and Ivan did not come, she grew almost frightened at her own disappointment, discovering only now, perhaps, that there could never be any other man in her life who could make her feel the extremes of emotion.
Varvara is frivolous, Irina is cold-hearted, and Maria is a super-woman; she makes a bet with her husband that she can seduce any man he brings to the house. To each of her lovers she gives an iron ring, symbol of their slavery; and like Circe, she transforms men into swine.
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