away from him, ‘let me take off my hat.’

She untied the strings of her hat, flung it down, slipped the cape off her shoulders, tidied her hair, and sat down on the little old sofa. Insarov gazed at her, without stirring, like one enchanted.

‘Sit down,’ she said, not lifting her eyes to him and motioning him to a place beside her.

Insarov sat down, not on the sofa, but on the floor at her feet.

‘Come, take off my gloves,’ she said in an uncertain voice. She felt afraid.

He began first to unbutton and then to draw off one glove; he drew it half off and greedily pressed his lips to the slender, soft wrist, which was white under it.

Elena shuddered, and would have pushed him back with the other hand; he began kissing the other hand too. Elena drew it away, he threw back his head, she looked into his face, bent above him, and their lips touched.

An instant passed… she broke away, got up, whispered ‘No, no,’ and went quickly up to the writing-table.

‘I am mistress here, you know, so you ought not to have any secrets from me,’ she said, trying to seem at ease, and standing with her back to him. ‘What a lot of papers! what are these letters?’

Insarov knitted his brows. ‘Those letters?’ he said, getting up, ‘you can read them.’

Elena turned them over in her hand. ‘There are so many of them, and the writing is so fine, and I have to go directly… let them be. They’re not from a rival, eh?… and they’re not in Russian,’ she added, turning over the thin sheets.

Insarov came close to her and fondly touched her waist. She turned suddenly to him, smiled brightly at him and leant against his shoulder.

‘Those letters are from Bulgaria, Elena; my friends write to me, they want me to come.’

‘Now? To them?’

‘Yes… now, while there is still time, while it is still possible to come.’

All at once she flung both arms round his neck, ‘You will take me with you, yes?’

He pressed her to his heart. ‘O my sweet girl, O my heroine, how you said that! But isn’t it wicked, isn’t it mad for me, a homeless, solitary man, to drag you with me… and out there too!’

She shut his mouth…. ‘Sh—or I shall be angry, and never come to see you again. Why isn’t it all decided, all settled between us? Am I not your wife? Can a wife be parted from her husband?’

‘Wives don’t go into war,’ he said with a half-mournful smile.

‘Oh yes, when they can’t stay behind, and I cannot stay here?’

‘Elena, my angel!.. but think, I have, perhaps, to leave Moscow in a fortnight. I can’t think of university lectures, or finishing my work.’

‘What!’ interrupted Elena, ‘you have to go soon? If you like, I will stop at once this minute with you for ever, and not go home, shall I? Shall we go at once?’

Insarov clasped her in his arms with redoubled warmth. ‘May God so reward me then,’ he cried, ‘if I am doing wrong! From to-day, we are one for ever!’

‘Am I to stay?’ asked Elena.

‘No, my pure girl; no, my treasure. You shall go back home to-day, only keep yourself in readiness. This is a matter we can’t manage straight off; we must plan it out well. We want money, a passport——’

‘I have money,’ put in Elena. ‘Eighty roubles.’

‘Well, that’s not much,’ observed Insarov; ‘but everything’s a help.’

‘But I can get more. I will borrow. I will ask mamma…. No, I won’t ask mamma for any…. But I can sell my watch…. I have earrings, too, and two bracelets… and lace.’

‘Money’s not the chief difficulty, Elena; the passport; your passport, how about that?’

‘Yes, how about it? Is a passport absolutely necessary?’

‘Absolutely.’

Elena laughed. ‘What a queer idea! I remember when I was little… a maid of ours ran away. She was caught, and forgiven, and lived with us a long while… but still every one used to call her Tatyana, the runaway. I never thought then that I too might perhaps be a runaway like her.’

‘Elena, aren’t you ashamed?’

‘Why? Of course it’s better to go with a passport. But if we can’t——’

‘We will settle all that later, later, wait a little,’ said Insarov. ‘Let me look about; let me think a little. We will talk over everything together thoroughly. I too have money.’

Elena pushed back the hair that fell over on his forehead.

‘O Dmitri! how glorious it will be for us two to set off together!’

‘Yes,’ said Insarov, ‘but there, when we get there——’

‘Well?’ put in Elena, ‘and won’t it be glorious to die together too? but no, why should we die? We will live, we are young. How old are you? Twenty-six?’

‘Yes, twenty-six.’

‘And I am twenty. There is plenty of time before us. Ah, you tried to run away from me? You did not want a Russian’s love, you Bulgarian! Let me see you trying to escape from me now! What would have become of us, if I hadn’t come to you then!’

‘Elena, you know what forced me to go away.’

‘I know; you were in love, and you were afraid. But surely you must have suspected that you were loved?’

‘I swear on my honour, Elena, I didn’t.’

She gave him a quick unexpected kiss. ‘There, I love you for that too. And goodbye.’

‘You can’t stop longer?’ asked Insarov.

‘No, dearest. Do you think it’s easy for me to get out alone? The quarter of an hour was over long ago.’ She put on her cape and hat. ‘And you come to us to-morrow evening. No, the day after to-morrow. We shall be constrained and dreary, but we can’t help that; at least we shall see each other. Good-bye. Let me go.’

He embraced her for the last time. ‘Ah, take care, you have broken my watch-chain. Oh, what a clumsy boy! There, never mind. It’s all the better. I will go to Kuznetsky bridge, and leave it to be mended. If I am asked, I can say I have been to Kuznetsky bridge.’ She held the door-handle. ‘By-the-way, I forgot to tell you, Monsieur Kurnatovsky will certainly make me an offer in a day or two. But the answer I shall make him—will be this——’ She put the thumb of her left hand to the tip of her nose and flourished the other fingers in the air. ‘Good-bye till we see each other again. Now, I know the way… And don’t lose any time.’

Elena opened the door a little, listened, turned round to Insarov, nodded her head, and glided out of the room.

For a minute Insarov stood before the closed door, and he too listened. The door downstairs into the court slammed. He went up to the sofa, sat down, and covered his eyes with his hands. Never before had anything like this happened to him. ‘What have I done to deserve such love?’ he thought. ‘Is it a dream?’

But the delicate scent of mignonette left by Elena in his poor dark little room told of her visit. And with it, it seemed that the air was still full of the notes of a young voice, and the sound of a light young tread, and the warmth and freshness of a young girlish body.

XXIV

Insarov decided to await more positive news, and began to make preparations for departure. The difficulty was a serious one. For him personally there were no obstacles. He had only to ask for a passport—but how would it be with Elena? To get her a passport in the legal way was impossible. Should he marry her secretly, and should they then go and present themselves to the parents?… ‘They would let us go then,’ he thought ‘But if they did not? We would go all the same. But suppose they were to make a complaint… if… No, better try to get a passport somehow.’

He decided to consult (of course mentioning no names) one of his acquaintances, an attorney, retired from practice, or perhaps struck off the rolls, an old and experienced hand at all sorts of clandestine business. This worthy person did not live near; Insarov was a whole hour in getting to him in a very sorry droshky, and, to make matters worse, he did not find him at home; and on his way back got soaked to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. The next morning, in spite of a rather severe headache, Insarov set off a second time to call on the retired attorney. The retired attorney listened to him attentively, taking snuff from a snuff-box decorated with a picture of a full-bosomed nymph, and glancing stealthily at his visitor with his sly, and also snuff-coloured little eyes; he heard him to the end, and then demanded ‘greater definiteness in the statement of the facts of the case’; and observing that Insarov was unwilling to launch into particulars (it was against the grain that he had come to him at all) he confined himself to the advice to provide himself above all things with ‘the needful,’ and asked him to come to him again, ‘when you have,’ he added, sniffing at the snuff in the open snuff-box, ‘augmented your confidence and decreased your diffidence’ (he talked with a broad accent). ‘A passport,’ he added, as though to himself, ‘is a thing that can be arranged; you go a journey, for instance; who’s to tell whether you’re Marya Bredihin or Karolina Vogel-meier?’ A feeling of nausea came over Insarov, but he thanked the attorney, and promised to come to him again in a day or two.

The same evening