Source: A Great Love, The Vanguard Press, New York, 1929;
Translated: Lily Lore;
First Published: 1923;
Online Version: marxists.org 2001;
Transcription/Markup: Sally Ryan.

I

ALL this happened long, long ago, at a time when humanity knew nothing of the horrors of war, and the monumental changes of the Revolution still lay in the dim and distant future.

It happened in those years when Russia still writhed in the clutches of darkest reaction, in the days of the Czar; the actors of this little drama were "emigrants," men and women who had been exiled, or had fled from their mother country because of political activity in behalf of the stricken masses of their native land.

Since then a new world has dawned in Russia, but these pitiful, human tragedies still exist.

It is for us to learn and to try to understand.

Seven months, seven long, endless months had passed since last she had seen him. When they had parted, it had been with the firm determination never to meet again.

His head buried in her shoulder and his eyes closed with the agony of their suffering, he had told her of his decision. He no longer had the strength to carry on the struggle, and to bear the constant conflicts their love had brought. His face was so thin, she thought, as she gazed at him, thin and worn with care and suffering, yet pathetically childlike and weak in its abject helplessness.

The doctors had found that his wife was suffering from a serious heart disease and must have absolute rest and freedom from excitement.

"I should feel like a criminal, no, like an executioner, if I caused her the slightest uneasiness. You understand, Natascha, that I must release her from this martyrdom of uncertainty, to give her every chance to recover? .... I can't carry on this deception any longer. Then there are the children. Sascha's sharp little eyes are beginning to suspect... the children must feel that I belong to them unstintingly, with all my heart and soul."

"But is that possible, Ssenja? Can you return to your family after all that has happened between us? Will you be able to forget how near, how dear we have been to each other? Where else will you find that complete, wordless understanding that has bound us together? Won't you be lonely without me?"

There was not a thought of herself in her anxious remonstrances – only of him, and of the life that lay before him.

"What else is there to do? I have no choice! Will I be lonely, Natascha? My heart will be cold and miserable – oh, more than I can tell you." He drew her close into his arms and closed his eyes in silence. "Natascha, I see no other way." As if to drive away the troubled thoughts, his lips sought hers with a man's searching, coaxing kisses, and her heart responded in anxious, troubled willingness.

It did not occur to her to resist his pleading caresses, although unconsciously she was disturbed, aye, almost offended by them.

On a dreary, rainy day they had parted. She had decided to leave on an early train and had already risen from the bed on which he still lay calmly asleep. She glanced at him occasionally as she automatically dressed and packed her belongings, and her soul was frozen and numb with bitterness.

"Already?" he asked in astonishment, when she came, in hat and coat, to bid him good-bye.

She sat down on the bed beside him and softly stroked his forehead, as a mother fondles her child when it is ill.

"Why this hurry to get away? Must you go this morning? Come, stay till this evening, and see me off. You can take the night train."

It was the whim of a man spoiled by the self-effacing adoration and rivalry of two loving women.

At any other time, she reflected, she would have responded to this plea for another hour of her presence, for a single hour of her time, with impassioned gratitude. Somehow, in this grim hour of leave-taking, however, his request struck her as unfair.

"You know why I must take the morning train. If I wait until this evening, I shall be late for the party meeting to-morrow."

"And what if you are? Would that be such a great misfortune? They will manage without you."

He drew her down to the bed and kissed her, but she refused to respond to his blandishments. A thrust, like that of a long, fine needle, had penetrated her heart. Would he never realize how cruelly such thoughtless remarks could hurt? How was it possible for a comrade to speak so slightingly of her work for their common cause, when he must feel that it, alone, would give her the strength to endure this last, irrevocable break, this final parting?

As she sat in the train that was bearing her away from him forever, looking out of the window through a fine net-work of rain into the unfamiliar landscape of a strange country, she still writhed under the restless, depressing hurt in her heart. His unkind words and the off-hand gesture with which he had dismissed her work overshadowed the anguish of this last, decisive parting.

So this was the importance he attached to her work for the cause? "They would get along without her!" The thought persisted, and would not be shaken off. Not until evening, when the shadows fell and the compartment emptied, as the travelers, one by one, arrived at their various destinations, did she begin to feel the misery of their parting. She sobbed bitterly at the thought that she would never see his tender, thoughtful, intelligent eyes again, and mourned for his smile, his gentle smile that sat so strangely on the face of this self-confident, universally admired man.

In parting they had promised not to write, and to make no attempt to see each other again.

"Only remember that I am in the world somewhere," she had tried to console him. "If ever you should need me. .. ." She had not been able to finish the sentence, but his deeply grateful look told her that he understood.

At the time it had all seemed so clear in its inevitability. Now she could not believe that it was true, as one cannot grasp the death of a beloved person until long after he is gone.

It was not the first time that they had decided to part. But always after two or three weeks of silence, a telegram or a letter filled with wild longing, self-reproach and urgent pleading had called her back to his side.

He needed her, he missed the hours of fruitful discussion with her that helped him to clear up his own ideas and to plan his work.

More than once, after such a parting, she had received a letter that plunged, without even the formality of an introductory salutation, into some difficulty that his task presented – a continuation, as it were, of some previously considered matter. Such letters invariably closed with a persuasive plea for a new rendezvous. How much of the romance of their love lay in this assurance that she was essential for his work!

This time, day had followed day, month followed month, without a line, without a message from him.

She plunged into her activities with rebellious pertinacity, trying to overcome the indifference that refused to be shaken off. Bit by bit, as her work threw her together with others similarly engaged, who lived for the same problems and responded to the same interests, her drooping spirits revived. Days came and went in which, she discovered with amazement, she did not once think of him, nor did she know whether or not to regret that this was so. Only late in the evening when she opened the door to her room, the lonely room of an "unattached" woman, after an exhausting day of intense application, the old, well-known nostalgia would take possession of her.

Sometimes, in spite of physical exhaustion, she would write to him, long, throbbing letters that reflected the weary body and the lonesome, forsaken soul that called to him for comfort. ... "Ssenjetschka, Ssenjetschka! You must feel how terribly alone I am! Why did you leave me? It is so disheartening to be so forsaken. Surely you might have remained my friend and comrade. I would gladly have given Anjuta all your solicitude, all your tenderness and your caresses for a little warmth, for a little human, friendly warmth...."

They were never sent to him, these letters, but it eased her heart, and gave her relief to pour out her woes to him. While she wrote she felt so convincingly that only outward, tangible considerations had come between them, that she would find warmth and understanding in his nearness if he were not so far away, if he but lived here in the same city with her, where they could meet as comrades and friends.

At such times Natascha forgot the restlessness that troubled her when she was with him, forgot that trouble and lonesomeness no longer vanished in his presence, that she would always have to stand alone, face to face with life, that she would always have to be strong for both of them, to bear their common burdens. She forgot that the days she spent with him demanded redoubled energy, that she always left him weary, exhausted, and glad to be able to return, unhampered, to the work she loved.

Strange how these chill hours of loneliness drew a rosy curtain over the frustrations of the past!

"I feel as if I were a widow," she wrote in one of these profitless letters. "I wander through the spots we visited together, where we worked and thought and felt as one. We were one, one in thought and one in soul, were we not, my dearest, in those days that will never return? ... It was this spiritual nearness that set fire to our hearts and inflamed our passion.... More than once I have been ready to curse this unholy love that has chastened the glorious, glowing, light-winged happiness that this friendship gave us. Had we remained friends instead of becoming lovers, Ssenja, you would not have had to leave me." But there were other hours too, hours of dismal disillusionment, when her faith in their oneness of mind and spirit tottered before the limitations of actuality. Memory recalled slighting disregard and cruel thoughtlessness until it would seem as if their friendship, too, had been a delusion.

"Did he ever really love me, love me, as I understand love?" Natascha would ask herself dismally in these wretched hours of self-analysis. "If he really loved me, could he have torn me out of his heart, cast me, homeless, out of his soul, so lightly? ... Is it possible that he does not feel how I am suffering? Was there no nearness, no understanding between us .... a figment of my imagination, an artificial product of my own desires? ...How much energy and strength, how much precious time this dream has devoured!" she would reflect angrily, when she recalled how her work, how the cause itself had suffered because she had held herself free for him, turning over work and responsibilities to others, missing important meetings and coming late to others so that she might be at his side. Her reputation as a faithful, conscientious worker had suffered irreparable harm because of this.

Deep down in her heart she upbraided him for the price this love of theirs exacted. In these long hours of self-communion she told him the full, unvarnished truth of her feeling toward him, of the bitterness that had collected and had been suppressed through all these years in her wounded, lacerated heart.

II

His photograph, an old one that he had given her in the early stage of their acquaintance, soon after she had met him at a literary gathering, stood among books, piles of paper and manuscripts that were everywhere in her room.

She often smiled when she recalled their first meeting. Familiar though she was with his name and work – she had written a number of pamphlets popularizing his theories and was generally regarded as one of his followers – she had never made his acquaintance.

"Do you know who is here this evening," the man who was her close friend at that time had asked her. "Your much admired Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch."

"Honestly? Show him to me, please. Where is he? Oh, I must see him!" She was radiant at the prospect of meeting him, and looked like a little girl in her eagerness.

"Hurry! Hurry! Where is he?"

"Calm yourself! You will probably be disappointed." Her friend was obviously displeased with her excitement. "I should call him a colorless sort of person, myself. As a man .. ."

"What does that matter? Am I interested in the man?"

She shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Sometimes you are very stupid."

"If you wish it, of course I shall bring him to you." Her friend departed while Natascha waited, smiling with pleasure and curiosity at the prospect of knowing in person this man whose thoughts had been so close to hers. She saw Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch struggle against her friend's attempts to bring him to her, and was highly amused when the latter finally took his unwilling victim by the arm and dragged him bodily toward her.

"He is bashful," she excused him in her thoughts. Ever afterwards she had looked on this Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch as a very exceptional sort of person, with awkward, but pathetically appealing manners.

She met him frequently after that, and each new meeting was suffused with the fragrance of an unconscious, spring-like happiness.

She had known no lonesomeness in that first year of their acquaintance. Courageous, strong and confident in her power to surmount every obstacle in her path. ... There had been cares, unpleasantness, even unhappiness, but it was all beautified, softened and rarified by a radiant exultation. ... Hindrances? ... Nothing could daunt her. The way of her life lay along a bold, precipitous path whose every winding enticed her hopefully onward – higher – higher. ...

"How can you live alone like this," friends often asked wonderingly, the women particularly. "Without a family, without a soul that belongs to you?"

She had broken off all relations with her friends with an abruptness that was foreign to her usual considerate nature.

"Isn't it depressing to live like this? I should become melancholy."

She laughed merrily in answer. No, quite the contrary. It was great to be alone again, free to come and go as one pleased. She was happy because her wings were not bound by distracting ,encounters, truly glad to be a single woman again. She had her work and needed nothing else. Life was so delightful, so exquisitely, captivatingly delightful!

Alone? Had she not her friends, who were close to her heart? "When she spoke of friends, however, she always thought of him, of him and of his wife and children. She loved them all because they were a part of him, and accepted Anjuta's pronounced femininity and her lack of comprehension for the standards by which she, the unmarried woman, directed her life, although she was occasionally shocked by her petit-bourgeois outlook. However, Anjuta was simple and good, and, above all, frank and honest. There was no room for prevarication in her scheme of things. Her tongue spoke what her mind thought, and she adored her husband with an almost religious devotion, a devotion Natascha understood and shared. How could one help but love him, this splendid, fearless, honest thinker!

At times, it is true, Anjuta's habit of displaying her marital felicity before Natascha, to tease her with her bachelordom, became slightly exasperating.

"I can't help but pity you, my dear. What is a woman's life without a man? It lacks the natural pivot about which a woman's life should turn. Oh, yes, I know, not everyone is fortunate enough to have a husband like Ssenja. Some marriages are anything but happy. But to a woman who lives as I do, in a sort of perpetual honeymoon after twelve years of marriage, the lot of a woman like yourself, whom no one needs for his happiness, seems empty indeed.... Imagine it.... Ssenja is still so ridiculously in love with me... just to show you. ... I know I shouldn't be telling this to another, but you are our friend..." and she would relate some intimate detail of her life with Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch to show Natascha how deeply he was still in love with her.

Natascha, who was always unpleasantly affected by these indiscreet intimacies, would interrupt them with a peculiar feeling of resentment not only toward Anjuta, but toward Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch as well. Somehow these pictures of the legitimate husband seemed to obscure the beloved face of the friend and thinker from her vision. For days after Anjuta told a story of this sort she would avoid him until the impression it created was gradually wiped out.

Occasionally it seemed to her as if Anjuta were telling her these cloying intimacies with a very definite purpose, perhaps even adding picturesque details of her own invention to torment Natascha. But these were pin-pricks, after all. They disappeared and were forgotten in the airy happiness of their growing intimacy which gave wings to her work and courage to fight for her place in life, while it illuminated the solitude of her little bachelor room.

Until there came this sudden, unexpected outburst of passion.... Had it, after all, been so sudden? Looking back, Natascha could see that it had germinated and grown in their hearts long before she became aware of its existence. She, with all her consummate faith in her knowledge of life, who had so often laughingly maintained that she would never be caught in the meshes of a romantic love-affair again, had lost her head. What did it matter that Natascha had sworn never to love again, that she had shunned its aches and wounds, this struggle and this failure of two people to understand each other; what mattered her protestations that she wanted only the friendship and understanding that came from common work and responsibilities?

Life had decided differently.

III

THEY were traveling together in a crowded third class railroad compartment to a party conference in another city. His wife who had been particularly loathe to let him go, had found countless excuses to keep him at home.

Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch was still undecided when Natascha had gone to their home on the evening before to ascertain his intentions.

"As a matter of fact, it is positively inexcusable on my part to so much as think of staying away. If I stay away, they [the opposing party faction] will take advantage of my absence and our motion will be defeated.... Still.... It looks as if I should not be able to go. Witjuscha is ill and Anjuta can hardly stand on her feet, she is so worn out with the strain. I can't square it with my conscience to leave her here alone. However ... suppose you drop in to-morrow morning on your way to the station.... Perhaps...."

Her way to the station lay in an entirely different direction, to be sure, but Natascha came.

She was received by his wife's disgruntled face. The self-conscious expression on his features betrayed the altercation that must have gone before.

He had decided not to go, he told her. Yet in the same breath he proved to her, once more, how essential it was that he be present at the conference.

"My absence will have far-reaching consequences, you will see. I know even now that our motion will be defeated.... Still... on the other hand ... Witja is still feverish and Anjuta feels ill.., it is really most unfortunate just now, during this really important conference...."

"I am sure we will manage quite nicely," she reassured him. "We will do everything in our power to carry out your wishes, you may rest assured." Not for an instant had she guessed the real reason for his anxiety to go with her.

She hurried to the station, not at all displeased at the prospect of a few hours for undisturbed reflection in which she could decide on the details of the motion she was to present, and lay out a plan of action to secure its adoption.

Mid-winter frost was in the air. Natascha walked briskly up and down the chilly station platform, her hands thrust deep into her muff, her mind already busily engaged with the work before her. She was tense but self-confident; her spirits thrilled with the joy of approaching battle. She would fight for their motion to the bitter finish, to bring back the glad tidings....

"Natalja Alexandrowna! Natalja Alexandrowna!"

Natascha turned quickly.

"Here I am, after all."

Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch stood before her, panting heavily, with a whimsical gleam of triumph in his eyes.

"I tore myself away, after all ... I was actually cruel. ... I'm sorry for Anjuta, but .. ." He took her arm familiarly while Natascha looked in wonderment at the strange expression of crafty exultation that persisted on his face.

The railway compartment was already overcrowded, and they were forced to sit very close to each other. Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch continued to gaze at Natascha with eyes that for the first time betrayed the man behind the gold-rimmed glasses.

Natascha was disconcerted, and it added to her confusion to notice that his hand trembled when he touched her. His agitation had already infected her calmness with its intensity. Eyes, seeking and precipitously avoiding each other, spoke their own language as the sweet, delirious current, tormenting and enticing alike, bound her more and more closely to the man who sat beside her.

At one of the longer stops they left the car for a breath of air. They breathed its keen, wintry freshness with a sigh of relief because they had escaped from this beautiful but disturbing dream. The smoke-darkened city was far away.

They spoke of indifferent, trivial matters, and the oppressive tension gradually vanished. Neither felt the desire to return to the crowded train.

But, back in the compartment once more, the mischievous boy with his arrow again began to exercise his magic. The sultry atmosphere and the enforced nearness of their bodies evoked an irresistible charm. Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch sought Natascha's hand and she did not withdraw it.

Hesitatingly he began to speak of his life at home, of his wife's suffering and ill-health, and of her inordinate jealousy. But although he spoke of Anjuta, they both understood that it was of his love for her, for Natascha, that he was telling. He had always pitied Anjuta more than he loved her; in fact he had married her because he felt sorry for her. She had never understood him. He had lived beside her like a stranger, locked up within himself, alone with his thoughts and his aspirations. Then Natascha had come and everything had changed. Life has become light and joyous, and he was no longer alone. She had the key to his soul. She was essential to his happiness. His love for her had passed through every stage of happiness and pain, but he had never dared to hope that she, too, could care for him. He had trembled before her like a love-sick school-boy. Did she know the jealous tortures he had suffered because of that friend who had introduced them, and how he had rejoiced when the break between them came – how he had loved her all these years, tenderly and hopelessly?

She listened to him in speechless astonishment, and was glad – yes, glad – despite the anxiety this confession caused her. But she no longer found the face of her friend, the thinker, in the impassioned features of this man beside her. How different he was, this new, strange Ssenja, from the thoughtful man with the childish smile of whom she had grown so fond!

The new Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch sat close beside her, and sought her eyes without evasion, now. What was to become of it all? Life without her was impossible. Yet there they were, his family and his children. Anjuta – he would never leave Anjuta.

"What shall we do? Why should we do anything? Have I asked for anything? It has been happiness enough for me to be your friend."

"My dearest!" Oblivious to the staring strangers about them, he threw his arms about her and kissed her temples. "It is so sweet to be with you ... so sweet."

Her lips smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.

"I am crying because I am so happy," she explained.

He pressed her close and whispered: "My precious, my beloved Natascha!"

At their destination they left the train in a daze, and were met by a number of comrades who escorted them first to the inn at which they were to stay, and thence to the conference. The first day passed without undue animosity. Natascha and Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch, keyed to the highest pitch with suppressed excitement, were taken back to the inn amid much banter and laughter by a group of sympathetic comrades. She loved them all, every one of them. Even the opponents were her dear friends and comrades that day. She was drunk with joy. She wanted to laugh, to be among others as happy as she; she wished this glorious day would never end. It would be different later – to-day she was happy. She would have to suffer for her love.

Ah, sooner than she expected.

It was on the last day of the conference.

The strain of three days of endless discussion followed by three sleepless nights was beginning to tell on Natascha. She found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on her work as secretary, to follow the thoughts of these strange speakers in their florid, frequently affected, oratorical flights and to record them correctly.

When she read her notes on the day's proceedings at the end of the session, it appeared that she had misquoted one of her opponents, so that the meaning of his words had been distorted. The opposition raged.

They insisted that it had been done as a clever maneuver on the part of the opposing party.

Natascha was helplessly confused.

Suddenly Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch plunged into the discussion with a bitter attack upon her for her carelessness. She understood, of course, that it was done to save his group from the aspersions of its opponents. He was placing the responsibility where it belonged – on Natascha's shoulders – in order to show that they, as a faction, had nothing to do with it.

After the session was over they all walked to the inn together, furiously discussing; Natascha alone was silent, trying hard to suppress her tears.

They were alone at last.

Crying bitterly she threw herself on his breast. She made no attempt to explain her tears; Ssenja would understand how she felt, since he, too, must feel unhappy over the situation into which her unfortunate error had forced them.

Had it been necessary to censure her quite so vigorously? Of course she realized that he must place the interests of their faction above her personal feelings.... She wanted to tell him that she understood. But he must express some regret, some contrition for having had to do it. Let the others believe, if they pleased, that she had tried to gain an unfair advantage by trickery. He must know that it had been a mistake, that only her extreme exhaustion was responsible.

"You understand, Ssenja, don't you? You understand... ?"

"Of course I understand, my poor little girl.... I know how hard it is for you to leave me. But what else can we do?"

Had she heard aright? Her tears ceased and she looked at him, uncomprehending.

"You know that the very thought of parting makes me suffer," he was saying. "But we will continue to love each other ... you will come to visit us as usual ... you must, or Anjuta will suspect that something has happened. Come, now, stop crying. Ah, how I longed for you all day long! Let me kiss you."

After that, could she tell him the reason for her tears? If he did not understand the cause of her misery, if he could find it in his heart to seek a last caress before they took leave from each other when she was so downcast and unhappy – could she hope to make him understand .. .?

He kissed away two great tears that ran across her cheeks.

"Don't cry, my little one. We will see each other often."

In the train they sat with a number of other comrades. At the station, back in the great, smoky city once more, they took formal leave ... as strangers.

IV

LOOKING back at it now, she understood the reason for her unhappiness more clearly than she had seen it at the time. Now she knew that the bitter tears she had shed when she had reached her room had not been the lonesome tears of a woman whose lover has left her for the first time. They were tears of sorrow over the first of many wounds that were yet to pierce her heart. Was it possible that Ssenja did not understand that a heart, wounded again and again, ceases to love, that love seeps slowly, drop after drop, out of the tiny wounds that never heal because they were made by thoughtlessness and misunderstanding?

After these seven months of lonely reflection, Natascha was beginning to understand the cause for her restlessness, to see what it was that left a residue of humiliation at the bottom of each cup of passion. Again and again she had come to him, honestly ready to bare her soul, but he saw only her, Natascha, and paid no heed to the voice that tried to reach him from within.... He took the woman into his arms while her soul, her innermost being, stretched out its arms to him in vain, and remained lonesome and forgotten. Had he ever known Natascha?

To be sure, his mind was always full of petty cares. Life had not been kind to him. He lived in an atmosphere of constant material misfortune and financial crises, of jealousy and suspicion, tormented by a nagging wife whose constant claims on his time and energy were hampering his efficiency.

"Yesterday Anjuta almost poisoned herself"...

Some such story overshadowed every one of the stolen hours they spent together. "I came in just in time to prevent her from swallowing the contents of a bottle of morphine. What can rye do, Natascha? Where is there a way out of it all?" Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch would bury his head in her lap while she softly fondled his beloved head. At first these tales of attempted suicide had shocked her, until their frequent repetition dulled her anxiety and made them seem ridiculous. She could not find it in her heart to laugh at Anjuta for these silly extravagances, however. She was too honestly sorry for her. But that she should rob him of his precious time, that she filled his mind so full of her everlasting petty cares that he had no time for serious concentration – that was unforgivable. Had she no comprehension of his greatness, that she refused to see that the energy and strength of a man like this were too precious to be wasted on everyday cares?

Natascha herself spared him wherever she could. She never told him of her cares and tribulations; before his own they bowed down and disappeared. With her he should always find tenderness and deepest, fullest understanding. She longed to take his-burdens upon her own shoulders, to free the thinker, the worker, for greater, more important responsibilities...

"How strong, how splendid you are," he said with a sigh. "You can stand alone in the world. You are so different from poor Anjuta. She would go under without my protection."

Natascha laughed at him as at a child. Dared she be weak where he was concerned? She must be his refuge, his comforter, the bringer of light and cheerfulness. After cares and tears and petty troubles at home he must find a holiday when he came to Natascha.

There were times, exasperating days, when mishap seemed to lurk in her path, when she lost patience with this, her self-imposed role, and a spirit of revolt would raise its head. Why did he always pity Anjuta? Surely Natascha's life was anything but easy. ... There was her work – hard, grinding, responsible work. Others saw and appreciated her worth. Had Ssenja ever given it a single thought?

"Oh, Ssenja, my dearest, I am so tired." Sometimes Natascha tried to win a bit of sympathy for her own aggravations. "They [the other faction] have instituted a veritable drive against me. Have you heard of their new resolution?"

"Please, don't let's talk about that. It really isn't worth getting excited about. Let me tell you the trouble I am in now. Anjuta is sick again, and the doctor says she must have absolute rest. I should have a nurse for the children, but how can I pay? You know the straits I am in as it is. Oh, Natascha, when I look at Anjuta and see how she works herself to skin and bone, how she gives herself completely to myself and the children, I realize what a criminal, what an egoist, what an entirely worthless scoundrel I am!"

Could Natascha think of herself when life was so bitter for him, for her idol, the light of her life?

There were rare occasions, moments of quiet relaxation from his own trials, when it would occur to Ssenja that Natascha was always, always the giver, that he was the receiver in their love for each other.

"Natascha, I know that our love is bringing you nothing but suffering. I am too selfish to love you as you deserve to be loved. Some day you will realize how I have misused your affection, and you will grow tired of me. Natascha, what will become of me then? You cannot know what your love means to me."

"I think I know, Ssenja. If I didn't, I don't believe I could bear it."

"I am your best friend, Natascha, though I may not always show it. I want you to believe that, dearest.... Sometimes there is a great chasm between us. ... I feel you withdrawing from me. You don't tell me everything about yourself. That is it, Natascha. It hurts. You must know that this close understanding between us, thiS absolute confidence and honesty is the most precious part of your love for me?"

"Yes, Ssenja, that is most important of all. We must understand one another. Each must know every thought that passes through the other's mind. You don't know how often I am hurt and unhappy because I miss this oneness between us.... At such times I grow cold and inexpressibly discouraged. I want you to care for more than just the woman in me."

"My little stupid."

"You were right, Ssenja. There are some things I haven't told you. Why? I don't know myself. I want to tell you everything."

"You must tell me. What is it? There is something, then, that you have kept from me?"

"No, you don't understand. It isn't a secret simply little, unimportant happenings that trouble me, and I hesitate to tell you about them."

"What, for instance, is troubling you now?"

"Well, then, these visits of Comrade Anton's. He has been coming to see me quite frequently of late, and then he sits and sits ... looking at me in such a peculiar way – oh, you know what I mean – for hours at a time. I hate it, but I can't refuse to let him come, can I? We are working together, and the poor fellow is lonesome. ... I'm a little sorry for him."

"What have his visits to do with your work together? I must admit, that is something I cannot understand. You will pardon me, but I find this pity of yours a bit overdone. He sits in her room and looks at her for hours with love-lorn eyes and she pities him! How am I to know how far this pity of yours will take you? It seems to me it should not be difficult to get rid of a person who annoys one with that sort of thing. Of course, if you like his courtship...."

"Ssenjetschka! How can you say that? ... how can you misunderstand me so?" Natascha laughed in spite of her indignation. Jealous,... and of Comrade Anton. The dear, delightful imbecile! Didn't he know after all these months with her that she idolized him? He dominated her every thought. Why, his figure with its slight studious stoop was dearer and more appealing to her than anything else in the world. Who was there that could compare with Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch? Who had his crystal-clear soul? Who could think as logically, as brilliantly as he? This jealousy of his was so amazingly naive that she could not be angry at him, although at times it became exceedingly disagreeable. Hadn't he been jealous of the violinist at the concert and sulked all the way home? Hadn't he talked himself into a rage and given her her "freedom?" Perhaps he had forgotten that disgraceful scene in the street car when she had exchanged a few bantering words with the conductor?

"Can't a woman look at a man without falling in love with him?" she demanded laughingly, when he came to his senses after one such incident. He had smiled a little shamefacedly, quite conscious of the wrong he had done her.

But Natascha felt that he distrusted her because of what he knew of her past.

"You yourself told me that you loved him the one with the black hair, I mean. How much did you love him? As much as you love me?"

"Much, much more, of course. ...Would I have sent him away so lightheartedly if I had loved him more? You know all about it. You saw it all. And still you do not believe that I love you? For all your cleverness you are sometimes exasperatingly stupid!"

"Other men are so much more persuasive than I, and know how to pay court to women. I shall never learn how to be a cavalier, Natascha."

"But that is exactly why I love you so much, Ssenjetschka. You are such a darling because you are like that."

"Darling! A fine darling you have picked for yourself!" he scoffed, embarrassed. But, nevertheless, he was soothed by her protestations.

In Natascha these scenes left traces of a vague hurt. She could not understand how he, he who had condemned others so unsparingly for the unhappiness their distrust had caused her, could himself so little control his jealousy. He had often comforted her in the earlier days of their acquaintance when she uttered vain regrets for the past, had been her haven of refuge when others had hurt and affronted her. He had been forbearance itself, he had ministered to her with an understanding one rarely finds, except where one woman understands and feels for another. She had teasingly called him Ssenjetschka-an echo of the past. ...

The Ssenja of those by-gone days, the friend and confidant, and this Ssenja, her illegal husband, were two different persons altogether. Natascha saw this more and more clearly in the seven months since they had parted.

Was it only this failure to think and feel with her that was driving them apart? As she recalled scenes of their life together, other ugly reminiscences forced their way forward. There were times when he had not even spared the woman in her. He who was mercy and thoughtfulness itself toward the Anjuta who so often abused and misused his goodness, could be incredibly ruthless where Natascha was concerned. No one had ever hurt her so cruelly, and the conviction that it was done unconsciously mitigated but could not wipe out the sense of outrage that persisted. It had begun in their first night together, in the little inn to which the comrades had brought them.

The comrades had departed at last and Natascha fled to her room, tremblingly assuring herself again and again that it was true. He loved her! This fearless thinker, this greatly admired, universally beloved revolutionist loved her! Sheer, great, immeasurable happiness!

She was preparing for bed when a knock at the door caught her with a tooth-brush in her hand. Before she could answer, Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch stepped into the room and turned the key in the lock.

Natascha, startled into immobility, stood gazing at him, a brush full of tooth-powder still in her mouth.

"How funny you look. Like a little boy!"

And disregarding Natascha's stunned perplexity he gathered her in his arms.

"You smell of peppermint," he laughed.

"Wait, let me ... at least let me wash this powder from my mouth."

She did not know what to say – she simply struggled to release herself from a position that was physically uncomfortable and distasteful to her. But he kissed her lips that were covered with powder, her neck and her bare shoulders with greedy, searching kisses. In that first night she felt no response to his caresses. They were strange, uncomfortable and unaccustomed. When she recalled his impetuous ardor in their first night together she remembered only the taste of peppermint toothpowder, and its disagreeable grittiness.

When he fell asleep at last, exhausted with burntout passion, she leaned over the head that rested on her shoulder with ineffable yearning. Not until then did the compassionate tenderness that was her love for him return to her. Worshipfully, just touching it gently with her lips, she kissed the high, thoughtful forehead of his proud, beautiful head.

At no time, neither then nor later, was there mere physical desire or flaming passion in the love she gave him. She gave her body with the deep, pure joy with which the priestess of old offered herself to the priest at the shrine of her temple. She was giving herself to her god. To him Natascha was the first woman to waken a great, passionate desire within him; he craved her passionate response. Not the god, but the man in him claimed her love.

V

IN these long months since she had left him she had often tried to understand her love for him. Had it brought her only suffering and resentment? Surely there had been breath-taking, delirious moments of unalloyed happiness as well!

She recalled long, sultry evenings in the first summer of their love, evenings she had spent with his family in the exotic strangeness of a southern landscape. He had brought his wife and children to the seashore near the little mountain village where she was spending a hard-earned vacation with a younger brother who was still at school. They were still trying to observe outward appearances, and she visited his family and met his wife at frequent intervals. He insisted on this, for Anjuta's sake. ... The old times, when it had been a precious privilege to enter his household, seemed to have returned again.

In these long summer evenings she experienced the spring-time of their love. They were frequently together, but always in the presence of others. A peculiar enchantment pervaded these meetings, a charm that enhanced their desire for one another and filled each day with the sweet torture of restless hope and expectancy. ... There were stolen hand-clasps, meaningful glances, half smiles that they alone caught and understood, and a longing exquisitely enhanced by their constant nearness and the impossibility of fulfillment.

They spoke much and happily of their work and the problems that engaged the movement at that moment. Sometimes they argued and quarreled as relentlessly as if they were strangers.

But the evenings – evenings on the porch – mysterious lights of a distant town, water throbbing in the rays of the moon....

What of those others, his wife and their friends, who sat beside them? Natascha and Ssenja were hardly conscious of their presence. They were alone together in the witchery of a southern summer night.

Natascha had only to throw herself back into her wicker chair and close her eyes to feel his nearness. She needed only to stretch out her hand to touch his body ... and dared not do it. Desire grew – her body was aflame with it, aflame with the knowledge that he, too, was being drawn to her, that he was longing to be with her. ... She would open her eyes in the moonlight, to catch a quick glance – a smile....

She laughed – she was so happy, so full of a sweet contentment no words could express.

Thus they would sit until midnight, fitfully speaking. Long silences, brisk discussions. And her soul trembled and sang, waiting, waiting and believing in a future full of joy and gladness.

"Time to go home!"

Natascha would sigh out of the fullness of her happiness as she rose to take her leave.

"We will see you home."

All together they would go with her along the road that lay milky-white in the silver of the moonlight. He, close beside her – a fleeting touch of his shoulder set her pulses racing faster and more madly than the most fervent caress when he was alone with her.

A last pressure of his hand at the gate, another quick, significant smile as they parted!

After they had all disappeared down the road into the darkness Natascha remained in the dim garden, unable, as yet, to bear the presence of others – her heart was too full, the night too marvelous, too irresistibly enchanting.... Ah, to be able to spread one's wings and fly into the darkly beckoning, star-lit sky! To run, swiftly, swiftly, down the hill to his house, to fall about his neck,....or...

Foolish, sweetly-mad, gusty, disconnected thoughts and desires.

Sweet, oppressive, all-pervading fragrance of southern night-blooms.

VI

A short, colorful summer. Short, and far-away as a dream.

Had there been no happiness in her love but this? Never again?

She tried to remember, tried hard; her brews furrowed darkly as she recalled the days that followed, for memory brought only painful, stolen, tainted hours, hours of hurt, hours of suffering.

Then her eyes grew light again.

Ah, yes, she remembered. She remembered. To think that she had forgotten!

The following spring ... she was engaged on her last larger piece of writing, working feverishly and without rest, completely oblivious to everything about her.

And then ... his telegram.

She took a case of books to the tiny room on the outskirts of the city where she kept her tryst with him, to fill with work the long, irksome hours between his visits that she would otherwise have spent in impatient idleness. There he would find her when he came to the little room among the acacia blossoms, engrossed in her task, cheeks flushed and the mist of authorship in her eyes.

That month had been one of unalloyed delight. What had made it so? – her love? – her work? At the time she neither thought nor asked...enough to know that it was beautiful, that her spirits soared, that there was life, the life that one feels only in childhood and early youth, in every fiber of her being.

At night she would get up from their bed to tear open the windows and admit the heavy fragrance of acacia blossoms, to look out at the fitfully-fantastic patterns the moon painted through the leaves on the grass, and on the table with the tea-cups that remained there from a late repast.

It seemed a pity to sleep, a pity not to feel the intense, throbbing wonder in her heart.

She recalled one night, just before they left – a hot, oppressive night.

Surrounded by dark-green shadows and fragrant flowers it seemed to Natascha as if she had never known before what life could mean.

She leaned far out of the window, drew a branch of acacia toward her and plucked a fragrant, tenderly-white cluster of blossoms.

"How beautiful it is! How beautiful!"

She wanted to laugh, to wake Ssenjetschka to tell him how much she loved him, how happy she was...

"Nataschka, where are you?"

"Ssenja, what a wonderful night. ... Look at these flowers, Ssenja. Do you smell them?" She bent over him tenderly holding the scent-laden flowers to his nostrils.

"My love, it is like the fragrance of your own sweet soul – tender and maddening." His lips touched the fingers that held the acacia-twig.

To Natascha it seemed as if her quivering heart were rising to unimagined heights. No, her love had brought her more than suffering: precious moments, sweet, inimitable hours that would never return had been hers as well – ephemeral, fragile happiness.

Would it never return? Never?

VII

THE last few weeks had overwhelmed Natascha I and her comrades with unexpected work demanding, intense, attentive application, and as always when the need arose, living, vital human beings, devoted to the cause, sprang up on every side to carry it through.

Natascha found a new satisfaction in the atmosphere of intense endeavor that surrounded her. For the first time she knew the satisfaction of being a tiny cog in a powerful mechanism beginning to rotate in resistless accomplishment. The frank devotion of her colleagues restored to Natascha some of her old vivacity and her laughter rang often and cheerily through the long, dark corridors of the dreary apartment in which they worked. Her comrades would smile indulgently.

"How happy our Natalja Alexandrowna has become!"

"She is probably in love," commented the comrade who worked at her side, matter-of-factly, and without looking up from his work he asked, "Is it true, Natalja Alexandrowna? Have you fallen in love?"

"And with whom, pray? With you, perhaps? Who else do I ever see, Wanjetschka?"

"Oh, these women are sly! Shakespeare already said ... you see how they are. Now she wants to put it all on me. No, my dear Nataschka, you won't fool me. I am not so easily led about by the nose. I see everything."

And throwing back his thick mane of hair, he looked at her out of mock-serious eyes, while Natascha continued to tease him. She was truly fond of Wanjetschka. In his gold-rimmed glasses and slow, thoughtful manner of speech there was something that reminded her of Ssenja.

It was late when Natascha hurried home that evening. Her back ached, her eyes burned and her throat was dry and parched, but a soul content and at peace forgets physical weariness. The first steps of the work they had launched were accomplished, and the movement was driving forward with gratifying swiftness under its own impulse, along well-ordered paths.

As she wearily climbed the stairs, she thought gratefully of the cup of tea and the new periodical with the much-discussed article of a greatly-admired comrade that awaited her. "After all," she reflected, "it is good to live alone. It gives one the moral right, after a hard day's work, to spend the evening as one pleases. If Ssenja were here, now, there would be this to do and that to attend to for him. I might have to start off, now, to the other end of the town to meet him, or have to fuss over a stupid supper at home."

As it was, a cup of tea and an hour's reading would bring the hard working-day to a perfect end.

"Has anyone been here?" she asked the landlady, as usual.

"Some books came this morning, and there is a telegram... ." "A telegram?" Her heart beat tumultuously. How silly of her ... something official, of course...

It lay on her desk near the package of books, and beside it a gray envelope with his thrilling, never-to-be forgotten handwriting.

Natascha's limbs trembled so violently that she had to sit down to steady herself.

Which should she open first? The telegram? The letter?

The telegram read: Arrive in H. on twenty-eighth, Expect you at station. Wire. Ssenja.

A year ago a message like this would have sent her whirling madly about the room. She would have counted the days, the hours. ...

Now the hand that held the telegram sank helplessly into her lap.

Not a line for seven long months. Not a single sign of life – and now this! Did he know what she was doing? He knew nothing of her life or her work, nothing of the thrilling months of grueling labor she had behind her. She might have been arrested, she might have died – he would have been none the wiser. "Come!" Just as if they had parted yesterday! As if nothing had happened between them, and he had not, with his own hand, inflicted a mortal wound to her love for him.

Should she go to him again to spend hours beside a man who was deaf to her inner voice, sit beside one who saw only her profile, never the whole Natascha? Should she lie in his arms and yet feel that she was far, far away from him because he saw only what he chose to see of her?

No, no. She would not go! She would not be caught again! Enough!

Natascha threw back her head with that characteristic gesture for which the comrades used to tease her, and took her pen to answer forthwith with a decisive refusal. But how to address it? His home was out of the question;his wife would plague him to distraction. To H.? He would not get there before the twenty-eighth. Suppose he were going there just to meet her again? The thought of his disappointment at finding her refusal there was almost more than she could bear. His letter would tell her what was taking him there.

As she read, her indignation wilted and disappeared and with it the feeling of neglect and hurt, giving place to a warm flood of tenderness for this gentle thinker with the tender soul who had written her these humbly pleading, abjectly self-reproachful lines. Far from being indifferent to her fate he had followed her activity from a distance, greedily collecting every hit of information he could get concerning her activity. He knew that she was engaged in difficult, responsible work and had rejoiced that she had found a congenial occupation to distract her thoughts from the pain he knew he had inflicted. ... He, however, had found that feelings are stronger than reason. It was useless to struggle against them. There had not been a day when he had not longed for her.

His relations with his wife were unchanged, worse, if anything. He had become more critical and more irritable, and his home life was becoming a veritable hell. Work, under those circumstances, progressed slowly. Recently, however, he had chanced on an interesting thought that seemed worth following up, and in search of material he had made the acquaintance of a professor in H. who had placed his library at Ssenja's disposal. For that reason, and because he must talk it over with Natascha, who would help him develop it more fully, he had decided to spend the next month and a half or two months in H.

Should they let this wonderful opportunity slip by without seeing each other again? Natascha must come! Secretly, of course, as always. No one must know where or for what purpose she was going (because of Anjuta). She would manage somehow. A postscript begged her to supply herself with the necessary funds, since his own finances were in a more than precarious condition. This was not new to her. She had always been financially better off than he, and they had always arranged their meetings on that basis, she palling the expenses that arose. Obviously he could not be expected to deprive his family at home for this purpose, particularly since the question of finances was always a sore one. His family life was the typical life of the Russian refugee of that period – irregular income and constant indebtedness. Natascha, on the other hand, had a regular income and steady employment.

"I am like a man who keeps a tryst with a strange woman, and naturally pays all expenditures of such an occasion," she thought with a slightly rueful smile.

This time Ssenja's demand brought her up short, however.

"Easy enough to write – supply yourself with the necessary funds! Where am I to get the money? The journey alone will cost more than I possess."

What was she to do? The party had been in urgent need of funds and she had given all she had, retaining just enough to provide for her frugal needs.

What was she to do?

Natascha was no longer in doubt as to her intentions. That question had decided itself irrevocably while she persued his letter. But she must find some way out of all the difficulties and hindrances that stood in the way of her going. Above all, this money question would have to be decided.

She began to calculate. What she had would just pay her trip to H. Where to get the rest – that was the question. Pawn her watch? She would get so little for it that it would not be worth the trouble. Telegraphing to her relatives was too distasteful to be considered – they would probably answer in a letter full of hints and recriminations.

A peculiar person, her Ssenja. Was she a millionairess? Did it never occur to him that it might be difficult for her to raise such a sum at a moment's notice? For an instant a feeling of resentment took possession of her. He paid no attention to her difficulties – ever. Like a child....

This comparison touched and softened her at once.

Exactly. A child, a great, over-grown child. Great minds were like that – like children in practical matters. That was natural.

She spent the rest of the evening, till far into the night, over her plans, but the more earnestly she reflected, the further it seemed to remove her from any way out of the difficulty.

Would she have to forego this visit to him because of a little stupid money?

Natascha sat up desperately in her bed and beat her hands together in her anguish.

Money was by no means the only consideration, of course. There were her work, and the responsibilities she had assumed. True, she had planned it so well that it was running smoothly on its own momentum. She would probably find someone to take her place for three or four weeks. But all this was more easily said than done. What would the comrades think of her? It was not pleasant to feel their disapproving eyes. A look of condemnation or an unfriendly malicious comment had more than once depressed her for a whole day. She would have to speak to Donzeff who, she knew, disapproved of her and called her "the fine lady" behind her hack. He would naturally resent this sudden departure and would see in it, not without justification, new proof of his contention that she was unreliable. "Just as I said. Natalja Alexandrowna is too much concerned with matters outside of the movement."

She could almost hear his unpleasant, grating voice as he walked from one corner of the room to the other with his slightly halting gait. She resolutely put him out of her mind, and refused to consider what would happen after she returned...That would take care of itself afterwards; now she must find some way out. Ssenjetschka must not be disappointed, and she herself... above everything else she must see him again. She felt that she would lose him irrevocably if she failed to answer his call at this time, and the thought, with its bitter finality, was more than she could bear.

Rather die than that!

When she came to the office earlier than was her wont on the following morning, her weary eyes fell with a gleam of hope on Wanjetschka, throning on a high chair, alone in the room in the midst of a cloud of cigarette smoke. He was underscoring a paragraph here and a sentence there in some newspapers that lay before him.

"I have the honor to report to her Highness Natalja Alexandrowna and to wish her the best of health," he mocked, without, however, raising his head.

"Good morning, Wanjetschka."

Wanjetschka caught a trace of self-pity in her voice and threw her a quick look over his glasses.

"What is troubling your Highness? Melancholy?"

"Oh, Wanjetschka, don't ask me."

Natascha gestured hopelessly. She felt herself so unfairly treated by life that even his laughing sympathy touched her.

"So, so," he exclaimed, more seriously now. "What is this? ... Something new? But why cry all your tears to yourself? Tell me about it, if things have come to such a pass."

He pushed his papers away, but, afraid of irritating Natascha with too great a show of curiosity, still persisted in this bantering pose of a friend ready to hear another's confession.

Natascha, hungry for a sympathetic ear, poured out a confused story of half-truths ... that she must leave town at once but that it was impossible for her to do so because of her work, that she had no money. On the other hand, if she did not go, a misfortune, a terrible misfortune might result....

"In short, it is a matter of life and death."

Tears ran from her eyes unashamed.

Wanjetschka knew Natascha as a thoroughly efficient worker, he knew her in her angry and in her despondent moods; that she could cry like an unreasonable child – that was an unexpected light on her character.

"Well, well, I wouldn't let my head hang in this fashion if I were you. Tears coin no money, you know. Now try to be sensible for a moment and tell me how much you need. Much?"

"That is just it, Wanjetschka. So much that it is practically out of the question."

And Natascha named the figure.

"Well, that is a round sum, I'll confess. We won't find it in our pockets. But why do you squander your own capital so thoughtlessly if you need money so badly. Of what use are these grand gestures when the party calls for funds if you yourself have to go begging afterwards?"

"But Wanjetschka, I don't need this for myself.... You don't seem to realize how important this is. If I don't go down there – if I don't get hold of this damned money somehow ... in a word, the life of a human being, perhaps of two, depends on it."

"So it's an escape you are talking about? You are trying to help someone get away from the police?" At last Wanjetschka believed he understood.

"Put it that way, if you will...."

"Why didn't you say so at once instead of beating about the bush with your 'personal reasons.' The lady must leave us, whether for a week or forever she doesn't say. If you had told me at once that it's a matter of conspiracy, would I have bothered you with questions? I am not curious. I know that one does not ask unnecessary questions in such affairs, and that what you do not tell me I am not supposed to know. But help ... ? If it is possible, of course I will help."

Natascha did not answer, but she was quite satisfied with Wanjetschka's interpretation of her predicament, particularly since he was evidently pondering on the possibility of procuring the desired funds for her. After all, was it a crime to deceive him concerning the purpose for which the money was to be used? She was merely trying to borrow on good security, and was fully prepared to pledge the royalties of her last literary work in return. The article was already in type.

"Never mind your financial schemes just now. First we must find someone who has money to give.... There is an old gentleman ... but I am afraid he has been too thoroughly plucked by our comrades in the past to be approachable. He will probably refuse to give again."

"Wanjetschka, I know whom you mean. Try it, please, for my sake. It will be easier if you go to him. Tell him that the money is to go through my hands, that I hold myself personally responsible for its repayment. ... I'll give you a note at once if you think it is best. .. ."

"Easy, easy, now. Not a cent within a mile of her and she is handing out receipts.... You are a financier, I must say. But here I am chattering away when I should be telephoning. ... Ah, Natalja Alexandrowna, a fine one you are to distract an honest workingman from his labor, tempting him from the straight and narrow path of duty."

Two days later Wanjetschka handed Natascha an envelope with great show of ceremony.

"Here you are. I have met the enemy and he is ours!"

"Wanjetschka, you darling!" She was ready to kiss him.

"What is all this ... darling and kisses, indeed! Such a fuss over a little, unimportant matter.

But now the receipt, my lady, if you please. The old man is a hard customer. He groaned...times are so bad and he has given so much that he has nothing for himself. Well, then I told him that you were ready to offer security and mentioned your willingness to give your personal receipt. He became soft at once. Here, here, don't put that envelope into your pocket without counting the money. How do you know I haven't cheated you? Perhaps I took half of it for myself."

"You would be welcome to every penny of it, Wanjetschka."

"This is a fine state of affairs. Why do you ask for twice as much as you need, pray, if one-half the amount is sufficient? Or do you intend to buy yourself a sable coat with the rest? Ah, your Highness, there is something mighty mysterious about this whole business. ...Who is this whose life is to be saved? ... Don't come to me to act as best man at a wedding, or to function at a christening when it is all over."

Natascha laughed happily and squeezed his hand.

"I am so grateful to you, Wanjetschka, so grateful."

At the door Wanjetschka turned back to her once more.

"In that case, you may send me a post-card from the place where you are going. It would be interesting to see it."

He laughed impishly at her evident discomfiture.

"I promise not to breathe a word to another mortal soul. I will keep it a secret to the end of my days ... but as to myself – I am interested. If you trust me, send me a card. Unless I receive one from you, you may consider our friendship at an end."

Wanjetschka pulled his fur cap over his forehead with an expression of severe grandiloquence and disappeared behind the door.

VIII

NATASCHA was in a fever of expectancy. Time in the railroad carriage was standing still. At times Natascha's heart expanded joyously at the prospect of meeting her lover, then it lay still, counting the minutes and hours that stretched between her and the moment when she would see him again. The last hours became exquisite torture. Suppose he did not come to the station! Where would she find him? Would she have to spend a wretched night in the dreary inn of a strange town – alone? When the station lights appeared outside the windows of the train at last, her heart beat so violently that she looked at her neighbors in alarm, so sure she was that they must have heard it. Tuk-tuk-tuk – it was causing her actual physical pain, and sent the blood like an unpleasant, icy douche through her veins. Her hands were tremblingly, uselessly numb as she leaned far out of the window for a glimpse of him.

Was he there? Was he there?

The station ... milling crowds ... people – so many of them! Would he be able to find her? Would he see her?

There he was. Of course, that was he.

Her heart beat louder still, but this time in exultant, joyous throbs.

In the long hours in the railroad compartment she had tried to picture their meeting. She would fall about his neck, disregarding the indifferent public about them.

How different this reality from her highly colored expectations.

Jumping hurriedly from the carriage-steps she stumbled and fell, umbrella, bag and purse flying ungracefully in different directions. She bent to pick up her scattered belongings and Ssenja helped her before he had a chance to greet her. Then he gave her his hand.

Natascha pressed it without a word, as if he were a stranger.

"Come quickly, Natascha ... all these people there may be someone who knows us. I shall go ahead. You follow."

Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch marched to the exit of the station with studied unconcern, as if he had nothing in the world to do with Natascha who, trying hard to make herself believe that she had already seen him, hurried anxiously after him, lest she fall behind and lose sight of him.

In the fleeting glance she had been able to give him it had seemed to her that he was changed. There was something different, strange about him. Had he become stouter? Or was his beard longer than he was accustomed to wearing it? This fear of his of meeting chance acquaintances was not new to her; this was not the first of these disagreeable walks through a strange city where no one had ever seen them before. To-day Ssenja's foolish mania, and even more the fact that he had not found a word of welcome for her after these long months of absence irritated her unaccountably.

They crossed a large, empty plaza under blinking lanterns to a hotel where a uniformed porter received them and a boy with shining buttons took her bag. In the elevator that carried them up to their rooms Ssenja approached her familiarly for the first time and tried to take her hand. Instinctively she drew back with a warning look at the boy with the buttons.

"That is all right," he reassured her. "I told them that I was expecting my wife and took a room for two. ...We will move to another hotel later on. To-night.... You see, I have learned from experience."

Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch chuckled as he looked at her archly through his gold-rimmed glasses. Natascha smiled a bleak little smile that drowned the light that had been glowing in her eyes all day so happily that her fellow-passengers had looked at her again and again. There had been so much dreamy bliss in those eyes. Now there was only anxious questioning.

Had she really met the man she so longed to see? Or was this man who stood beside her another – a stranger...?

The boy with the shiny buttons opened the door of a very ordinary hotel room with a flourish and bade them good-night after he had carried in her bag.

"Let me look at you. Thinner? Or are you worn out after the trip?"

He took her passionately into his arms.

"Ssenjetschka, wait a moment. Let me take off my hat."

Natascha struggled out of his embrace with hands upraised, trying vainly to remove the hat that resisted her efforts because the hatpin had become entangled with her veil.

"Senjetschka, please."

But Ssenjetschka paid no attention to her outcries. He pressed her to him and kissed her wildly.

"My sweet girl, my beloved. ... I wanted you so, I wanted you so!"

The hat was still on her head, but Natascha lay across the wide bed, his hot breath scorching her face. She felt only extreme discomfort. Her hat was pulling at her hair, hair-pins were boring into her head. ... Ssenja himself seemed far, far away.

Bruised and broken, the beautiful shining happiness that had brought her to him as if on wings. Bruised and broken by Ssenja with his impetuous, brutally-inconsiderate caresses.

"Let me kiss you, Natascha. Give me your lips. Why do you turn away? Do you love me?"

Natascha silently pressed his head to her breast, the dear head she loved so much.

She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. Tears of happiness he thought.

Let him think as he wished. Natascha knew that her soul was weeping over the shattered fragments of another dream, that her heart was bleeding from another wound that would never, never heal.

He was asleep, and Natascha sat at the head of the bed staring steadily into the darkness before her, trying in vain to comprehend what had happened.

"He loves me. Is it me he loves, or the woman that is I? That in me which belongs to my sex, not me. Is it for this I left my work, and went into debt? Was it for this that I rushed, heaven alone knows where, excited, happy, believing in something fine and beautiful ... ? Oh, what a fool, what a fool I was!"

Something had happened that could never be undone. She wanted to wring her hands and burst into tears!

Had she ever possessed the Ssenjetschka of her fond memories, had this man with his passionate love ever been her friend, her comrade? Had it not always been Ssenja, the man, who loved Natascha, the woman?

Why had she come? A thousand miles away she had not been as lonesome as she was, here, at his side. A thousand miles away there had been memories,, dreams, hope ... here the dream was gone. Gone forever!

*****

When Natascha arose the next morning there was a strange coolness in her soul. She was indifferent, indolent....

"Tell me about everything that has happened to you since I saw you last."

They were sitting at their morning coffee in the disorderly – and to Natascha for that reason – most uncomfortable hotel room. Natascha had no desire to talk. Yesterday – ah, yesterday, in her way to him she had pictured it all in glowing colors. She felt that she would never finish her recital of the events of the months that had passed. They would sit together until late into the night, talking, planning. She had tried to recall every characteristic incident that might be of interest to him, had called back to mind the internal party life of the last half-year for discussions and problems that might have escaped his notice. She had even resolved to do penance for doubting his love for her, to abase herself before him and to drive away the hurt her confession would cause with tender words of deepest understanding. But first they must find each other again, must feel that their souls were swinging in the glorious harmony of love. Then, only then, as the great, final chord, their senses would break down all barriers and passion would burn up all that was strange and foreign between them in its hot, consuming flames.

That was their meeting as she had dreamed it. But after this bridal night Natascha had lost her desire to speak. Her answers were languid and disspirited.

"You seem to be out of sorts," he remarked, scanning her face intently.

"Not at all. I am simply tired. Not enough sleep."

"Poor little girl! What is to become of you if one night with me wears you out like this?"

There was a quizzically self-conscious smile on his face as he said this, that brought an unwilling frown to Natascha's brow. She struggled for self-control lest some unaccustomed, sharp word slip past her lips.

A knock at the door.

Ssenja hastened to open.

A telegram.

From Anjuta. It had been sent general delivery, but the hotel address had been reported to the postoffice. Kokotchka had the measles and was keeping Anjuta in constant attendance. She was just about worn out.

"As usual," Ssenja sighed.

As he stood before her with his legs spread and his head bowed down, there was something so childishly touching in his glum figure that Natascha's old tenderness for this man, who was so strong and determined in the big things of life and so weak and helpless in its trivialities, filled her entire being once more.

This, this was the Ssenja she loved, this poor, pathetic, touchingly helpless creature. ...

In an instant she was beside him, holding his head in her arms and gently kissing his eyes. ... Somehow she felt that she had just found him again, as if she had neither seen him nor been with him before.

"Wait a moment, Natascha. Not now, please."

Again he had misunderstood her innocent demonstrativeness. "We must think this over. What am I to do about this, do you suppose?"

He spoke with a discouraged movement of his hands and Natascha caught them, the dear, helpless, impractical hands, in her own and stammered:

"Just now I felt ... as if I had just this moment come back to you, Only just now! You are such a great man, Ssenja. All the world looks to you for advice and direction, and then some little thing like this occurs and you are so forlorn! I am so happy, so happy because I have found you again. I thought I had lost you forever ... that I had been deceived in you. That was so dreadful, Ssenja. But you are here, after all .. ."

*****

On the following day they went to another hotel. Natascha went first to register in the large, conventional hotel they had chosen, Ssenja taking a room on the same floor a few hours later. Since he had come to work, she had insisted on a comfortable, spacious room for him, while she contented herself with a small, unprepossessing cubbyhole, trying to make it as presentable as possible for his coming by changing the position of the tiny sofa, distributing the books she had brought, and buying a few flowers.

He came unexpectedly, as always, and found Natascha at the desk where she was writing the promised card to Wanjetschka.

"So this is where you are hiding. I've been wandering up and down corridors looking for your room for the last half hour. The room numbers are arranged in the most erratic fashion – 57, for instance, is directly beside 85...

"Your room is quite charming. I've been killing time by strolling about the city, and now, I suppose, it is too late to take a nap. Goodness, almost six o'clock. I will have to go to the professor's house at once."

"But why? Surely the morning will be time enough for that."

"No. No. Suppose Anjuta should write to him that I left home on the twenty-eighth?"

"In that case you will simply tell her that you did not go to him at once when you arrived. Surely that is simple enough. What under the sun should make her think that I am here, when she knows that we had definitely decided to see nothing more of one another?"

"As if that made any difference! Don't you know Anjuta? No, if I fail to report at the professor's house to-day, I will not have a peaceful hour while I am here. One can never tell how a thing like that will come out and cause no end of trouble. Whether you like it or not, Natascha, I must go to-day."

Natascha realized the uselessness of further protestations. His fear that Anjuta might suspect her presence in H. amounted to a positive mania. She said no more.

"What were you doing while I was away? Writing?"

"Yes. Writing."

His eyes had caught sight of the post-card on the table and returned with a frown to her embarrassed countenance. Correspondence from their meeting places was always strictly prohibited. They had made it a practice to send mail by way of an absolutely reliable third person. Yet there lay Wanjetschka's post-card, with the name of the town in Natascha's handwriting plainly visible over a picture of the locality.

"To whom are you sending that card?" Ssenja demanded, unpleasantly affected by the disturbance in Natascha's face. He bent over the table to read the address.

Trying vainly to conceal her discomfiture by a jocular pretense Natascha covered the card with her hand.

"I shall not tell you. I won't let you see it. This is my secret."

"Secret? Now I insist on seeing it. Give me that card at once. I demand it. If you do not give it to me willingly, I shall use force."

They struggled laughingly for a moment, but their faces betrayed the seriousness behind their play.

"Well, this is a fine state of affairs, I must say. When have you had secrets from me before?... You never used to hide your letters from me."

"I don't want you to read my letters. You have no right to ask it.... How dare you! This is tyranny!"

He had managed to pry apart the fingers that clutched the card, and held it in his hand.

"Don't you dare read that card! Don't dare, I tell you ... ! This is an outrage!" Natascha's voice was tense with fury as she snatched the card from his unsuspecting hand and tore it into bits before she threw it into the waste basket.

"Natascha!"

They looked at each other with angry, measuring eyes.

"This is an imposition, a vulgar, coarse imposition. Don't you dare read my letters! Don't you dare !"

Natascha was panting, her cheeks glowed and her lips unconsciously repeated the bitter words again and again.

"Natascha! Natascha! What does this mean? It is true, then?" He sank to the sofa and covered his face with his hands, a picture of tragedy.

"Is what true?" Natascha looked at him curiously.

"That you have already found another lover. That you left another man behind you, a man of whom you are fond... ?"

"Are you mad? ... What gives you the right to think that?"

"I received two anonymous letters with all sorts of details. .. ."

"And you believed them?"

"I burned them up at once ... but after this....what am I to think? Your embarrassment when I came in, your incredible stubbornness, this anger ... you never spoke to me in this tone before. Oh, Natascha, Natascha! Can it be true? How can I bear it? Why did you come if you care for another? Tell me openly. Anything is better than this uncertainty."

"Ssenja, please come to your senses. Think what you are saying. Why should I lie to you? What could bring me here to you if I loved an- Other?"

"Pity."

"Pity for you?"

"You have such a good heart."

His face was so drawn with pain, his eyes so full of genuine sorrow that Natascha could not help smiling.

"Dear, silly Ssenjetschka! How could you believe that for a moment? Don't you know what you are to me?"

Kneeling down before him she embraced and kissed him. He resisted at first and refused to be caught by her caresses and tricks.

"And the letter?" he demanded, distrustfully.

"The letter? ... Oh, Ssenja. Read it then, if you insist on being so stupid."

She hurried to the table, pulled out and overturned the basket so that the pieces lay on the floor before her. And while they crouched on the floor to fit the pieces together, she told him of her financial transactions and of the help that Wanjetschka had given her.

Ssenja knew Wanjetschka. This, to be sure, was no rival. The innocently pleasant tone of the postcard reassured him completely.

"You don't know how you frightened me, Nataschinka. Now, tell me if you please, what was the meaning of this senseless comedy? What made you act in this incomprehensible manner?"

His tone was gruff.

"I felt that you would be angry at me for writing from here. Still, could I have refused to do him this favor after all he did for us? He won't betray us, of that you may be sure. He would die rather than tell, after the promise he gave me."

"Yes, I understand. Nevertheless, Natascha, it is very careless of you to write from here. One never knows what may happen. The card may fall into indiscreet hands.... Furthermore, what will Wanjetschka think ... ?"

"Let him think what he pleases.'A romance' he will think. With whom? That does not concern him."

"No, don't say that. He may happen to find out that I was here – how can one tell? After that there would be guesses and talk. As you please, of course, but I beg you again, to write to no one from here, not even to Wanjetschka."

His tone as he said this was firm, almost commanding.

"If it displeases you, very well. I shall not send the card."

Ssenja sent another searching glance in her direction.

"But you are offended. Because you have found a master, I suppose, who permits himself to issue orders." He embraced her. "What is one to do with you women? One need only look the other way for a moment and you do things like this. What now? Offended again?"

He knew this gesture of hers – she had thrown back her head with an angry movement.

"Come, sweetheart, come. Don't be angry at me. I was just teasing. You know I'm not angry. On the contrary, I am happy and grateful to you for taking a load off my heart. You can't imagine how uneasy I have been, and how your fury just now frightened me. I ... I thought I had lost you. I can't live without you."

He embraced her and pressed his face caressingly to her breast.

"I am so contented when I am with you, Natascha, I want to stay near you always, ... Good heavens!

"The professor! Why, it's almost seven o'clock. I must run. Good-bye, Natascha. Till this evening." He hastened away while Natascha collected the fragments of the card to Wanjetschka from the floor and dropped them thoughtfully into the basket once more.

She was so tired. She wished she were back at home again, feeling somewhere in the background of consciousness: We have become strangers to one another.

IX

SENJA returned in a highly elated frame of mind, full of new thoughts his conversation with the professor had started. The professor's research work had recently taken him along the lines of Ssenja's own investigations.

"You can't imagine the thrill of finding someone to whom one can speak without expounding fundamentals, who shows by the way he approaches a subject that he understands it and forces one by the soundness of his observations to reevaluate one's own theses. ... As I talked with him I saw again and again where I had given the subject insufficient study. Other questions, I find, will require complete reorientation on my part. It is of vital importance to discuss these matters with someone who has real knowledge, and I am only just beginning to realize how starved I have been for intelligent intercourse as an inspiration and a help to my work."

Could Ssenja but have guessed that each word he uttered was piercing her heart like a long, fine needle, leaving a painful wound! In his eyes then, Natascha had never been an intelligent person with whom one might discuss one's problems? Poor deluded fool that she had been all these years, to have imagined that she inspired and helped his work, that she had become indispensable to him!

"What did the professor tell you that was so extraordinarily clever," she asked," that even you begin to doubt the validity of your own theses?" There was a sharp challenge in her voice, but Ssenja paid no attention to it. He was quite evidently in no mood to discuss his conversation with the professor with her. To-morrow – some other time, perhaps. But Natascha insisted. She asked questions and demanded answers with unusual pertinacity and defended Ssenja's erstwhile theses as passionately as if she herself and her mental integrity were being questioned.... Had Natascha allowed Ssenja to look into her heart he would have been astounded to discover the real cause for her strange agitation. Natascha was jealous, jealous, for the first time in her life – she who had never felt a trace of resentment over his exaggerated consideration for his wife, who had honestly shared his fear for Anjuta's health and life during her recent pregnancy and delivery – at a time when they already loved each other. This professor whom she had never seen, whom she might never know, was arousing a blind tormenting jealousy in her heart. It would be so easy for him to occupy the place she held in Ssenja's life, making her superfluous where she had believed herself irreplaceable.

With exasperating, superficial sketchiness Ssenja repeated the professor's contentions, as if they could be of no possible interest to her. His manner intimated that he was simply submitting to her unreasonable, childish curiosity. Natascha vindictively attacked what she considered a fallacy in the professor's logic and propounded her point of view extravagantly, but he bluntly declined to enter into the matter.

"You have simply failed to follow his line of thought, which is a great deal more complicated than you seem to realize," and with this he turned the conversation from the.subject with infuriating boredom in his voice. "I am really tired," he added with a yawn. "Time to go to sleep.... Goodnight, Natascha."

"Going already? I had been counting on a few hours with you this evening to talk matters over. I have hardly seen you all day."

"What is there to talk about? It is after midnight, and we can talk to-morrow. I've had practically no sleep for days, and need a good night's rest to be fresh for work to-morrow. The professor and I are going to the library together."

He kissed her dutifully but at the door he turned back to her once more.

"You know, Nataschka, this was a splendid idea of mine – to come here, I mean. This has been a gratifying, profitable day. Sleep well, Natascha." Nodding amiably once more, he went out.

Noisily Natascha pushed the bolt.

Gone – without a thought of her and the intolerable, lonesome day she had spent. "Splendid, profitable day," indeed. This condescending attitude when he spoke to her, as if she were a frivolous light-o-love instead of a comrade deeply interested in his work! This had never happened to her before, nor would she ever forget or forgive this humiliation. The assurance that he understood and approved of her opinions, that he was objectively interested in her work and valued her opinions had helped her to bear criticism, failure and attacks with equanimity. Was it possible that he had pretended interest in her work only because she was a woman who appealed to the man in him? Would he have shown her the same interested attention if she had been an unprepossessing frump, or would he have turned the conversation from her objections as he had done this evening?

"I shall go to him at once to tell him how I feel. To-morrow I will return to my comrades and my work. This is no life for a self-respecting woman, this endless chain of humiliations. I no longer love him. I believe I hate him."

Resolutely she went to the door, but as her hand touched the knob a picture of the probable outcome of her visit flashed across her mind as the futility of any attempt to make him understand dawned on her. She returned to bed in helpless anger.

It was becoming more and more impossible to break through the wall of misunderstanding that was arising between them. Words that escaped their angry lips clung to it making it more and more impenetrable.

Very well, then. Since he refused to listen to her, let matters remain as they were between them. She would try to explain no more. To-morrow she would tell him calmly and undramatically: "I am going home. They need me there." Let him stay here with his professor!

She tugged furiously at the laces of her shoes. She would go to sleep, to stop thinking. ... With the perversity of inanimate objects the laces had become twisted and tangled into an inextricable knot.

"Is that so?" she murmured grimly. "This is how I settle such affairs." In a wide are the torn laces flew to the floor; her dress was tumbled on the chair in a disorderly heap – let it rumple! She pulled at her hair with vindictive jerks, and clenched her teeth as she prepared for the night. Yet, unconsciously, she had been making herself as attractive as possible, and the sight of her figure in the glass, swathed in the brightly colored dressing gown that Ssenja had christened the "gown of Circe" when he first saw her in it, threw her once more into a fit of deepest depression. She couldn't leave without having shown herself in it again – she remembered how he loved to wrap her in its voluminous folds. She couldn't leave him – where would she find the strength to battle with life, if she were never to see him again?

What was more natural than that she should go to him, to appeal to him and make him the arbiter of his own shortcomings, that she might forgive him all the hurt that the blind Ssenja had inflicted on her this day? Not angrily, as she had wanted to go at first. ... He would listen to her and she would make him understand. What was it worth, this understanding they were so proud of, if she must conceal the thing that lay nearest her heart? She would not be able to sleep at any rate, until she had spoken to him.

Cautiously, lest she meet someone in the long corridor that led to Ssenjetschka'-s room, she crept along over the soft carpet into which her feet sank unpleasantly. Sixty-four, sixty-six, sixty-eight...here it was. ... Those were his shoes.

Should she go in ... better not, perhaps. More than an hour had passed since he had left the room; he would be fast asleep. But the desire to see him and to stroke his beloved head, the urgent need of banishing these unendurable doubts, to melt this ice that held her soul in its clammy embrace, impelled her to turn the knob of the door. It opened with a shrill squeak ... the light of the corridor fell across the sleeper's face.

"What is it? ... Who is it?" ... He blinked at her with his near-sighted eyes without recognition.

"It is I, Ssenjetschka."

She closed the door and knelt down beside his bed.

"You, Nataschka. Well, well, so you came after all..."

An undertone in his voice betrayed a smug masculine self-satisfaction that cut her to the quick.

"Ssenjetschka, I came because I felt so badly! I was so bitter and alone. .. ."

"Come, come, now, need you apologize for coming to me? You simply can't go to sleep, knowing that I am so close by. Ah, what is this you are wearing, temptress?" He gathered her into his arms and tried to draw her into his bed.

She resisted half-heartedly, but responded to his kisses.

"Let me go, Ssenjetschka. You mustn't. I didn't come for this.... There is something I must speak to you about. I came only to warm my heart – to be near you.

"Come, you with your 'I only came for this' and 'I only came for that!' You women are a peculiar lot – always looking for some excuse or pretense to hide the fact that you, too, have sinful desires. We men are always wicked seducers. Here this lady comes to me of her own free will, wakes me out of my sleep, and now, if you please, what a touch-me-not she pretends to be. ... Have I offended you? I was just teasing, little silly. You know how glad I am that you came to me, you sweet, wonderful creature.... Here my little girl comes to warm her heart and must sit on the cold floor. Come in here to me."

Natascha's negligee formed a brilliant splash of color on the hotel room carpet.

*****

"Not another word now. I want to sleep." Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch interrupted another attempt at what he called "her psychological dissertations." "The day is the time for talk. Now I want to rest. You forget that I must work to-morrow, and won't be able to, unless my head is clear."

He turned his face to the wall and wrapped the blankets about him; Natascha lay on her back, her hands under her head, disgust and resentment in her heart.

Always this offensive change in his attitude toward her – before and after. Coldness and strangeness while Natascha felt closer, nearer to him, the happier their union, the more ardent his caresses, the more fervent the assurance that they loved each other had been.

She looked sadly at his familiar neck ... the same, beloved head, the same, clever Ssenjetschka. Gently she kissed the nape of his neck and softly arose from his bed. But her soul was as cold and lonesome as before.

"Sleep well, Ssenjetschka. You will sleep more soundly if I go to my room. Won't you kiss me before I go?"

She bent over him.

"Haven't we kissed enough for to-night? That is something I can't understand in you ... sometimes you seem positively insatiable, it seems almost like an affliction!" Natascha drew back as if she had been struck. Was this the interpretation he put on her longing for a little warmth?

Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch pressed his head into the pillow while she slowly dressed in the dark room before going through that endless corridor with its red, disagreeably soft carpet once more. At the corner where the corridor turned, the nightporter sat at his usual place by a small table.

When Natascha passed him he looked at her with a shamelessly derisive look and murmured a word whose insulting import she could only surmise.... Natascha shuddered.

X

THE days in H. had become a life of voluntary I solitary confinement. These periods of "retirement" during their carefully planned meetings had amused her hugely when they first entered upon their clandestine relations. She called Ssenja her "pascha" and herself his "harem odalisk." This sudden transition from a life of nervous, effervescent activity in constant human companionship to this complete isolation from life and people had appealed to her sense of the ludicrous.

The comrades had never expressed surprise at her sudden disappearances. Some of them believed that she was bound by family ties that forced these periodic absences upon her, while others attributed them to mysterious "conspiratic" activity.

These brief interruptions of her hurried, nerve-racking life had always been welcome periods of relaxation and repose. This time the role of odalisk oppressed and irritated her. She dared not leave the hotel, lest some chance acquaintance meet her on the street. She must not remain too long in the reading-room lest Ssenja, returning to her room, leave again without having met her. Ssenja's complete absorption in his work and even more – it seemed to Natascha – in the professor and his hospitable family, left her alone for long hours that dragged along in tedious, irksome and fruitless expectation of his coming. He drank his morning coffee with his eyes on the clock lest he be late for his appointment, he stayed at the professor's house for dinner and spent most of his evenings there.

Natascha had to content herself with fragmentary remnants of his busy days, stolen hours when he escaped the professor's house under the pretense of important letters to be written and notes to be filed. He always came to her in the best of spirits, but consistently steered conversation away from any but the most superficial topics. Most of all he liked to lie on the sofa while Natascha prepared tea, pretending to appreciate his enjoyment of it. He told her less and less about his work and was almost niggardly in his reports of conversations with the professor.

Her antipathy to the professor grew to even greater proportions in consequence. The old "archive rat" with his scholarship was deluding Ssenja into distrusting his own opinions.

"I'm amazed at your naivete," she once remarked to him. "What makes you so idiotically frank with the professor? You spread out your theses for him before you have satisfied yourself concerning them. By the time you are ready to write he will have used them for his own purposes, with the added advantage of his own professional intellectuality."

The off-hand manner in which she spoke was calculated to irritate Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch out of his placidity.

"How childish that is, Natascha. You are becoming almost as bad as Anjuta. Since when do colleagues make it a practice to steal each other's ideas?"

"Of course, you will not believe that such things happen. You have never heard of an incident of that kind! Just the same, if I were in your place, I should be just a little more discreet ... not quite so naive..."

Though Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch objected, she felt that the seed of distrust so cleverly planted had taken root, and the thought gave her a momentary glow of satisfaction.

But after he had gone she relapsed into deep depression. She was aghast at the depths of vileness she had uncovered in her own nature. Was this despicable desire to hurt the professor's standing in her lover's eyes the fruit of her jealousy? She was beginning to understand some of Anjuta's inexplicable meannesses of the past.

Thenceforth she schooled herself to listen to her lover's praise of the professor and his family without comment. More, she tried to stifle the seeds of distrust she herself had planted in his soul by openly enthusing over the professor's intelligence and character. But she knew that the germ was still alive.

Morning after morning she left her bed with the unspoken hope – "to-day he will stay here with me...well, not a whole day, of course, but a few hours, at any rate, to give us a chance for an honest heart-to-heart talk." But day after day passed in discouraging sameness. There were kisses, light badinage at tea-time, there were caresses at night but never a moment's close communion. Natascha tried to work. She had promised to write a pamphlet whose date of delivery was drawing uncomfortably near, but her work refused to progress. It dragged heavily from an unwilling pen, and each day found her increasingly dissatisfied with the results of the previous day's sterile efforts. Ssenja did not once ask her how her work was progressing. Time ran through her fingers like sand, squandered for useless, senseless futilities.

By way of the forwarding address she had left behind, Natascha had received a large bundle of letters, some personal, others connected with party affairs, the latter with the disturbing news that two prominent comrades were "ill" (arrested) and expressing the fear that their illness would be prolonged, possibly with serious, threatening consequences. Natascha's subsequent days were overshadowed with the portent of disaster. What right had she to remain here in H.? Yet she could not tear herself from Ssenja's side while this feeling of strangeness between them persisted. "If I leave now," she assured herself over and over again, "I shall consume myself in self-reproach. ... I must come to some understanding with him before I leave."

She had made up her mind to force the issue that evening, but he returned even later than usual from a formal supper that had been given in his honor, slightly intoxicated and in a highly gratified state of good humor. He did not notice the clouds on Natascha's face.

"I ate and drank so much I can hardly move. I believe I am a bit under the weather, too, but that will pass off in a little while. Have you been longing for me? Come, a little kiss behind your pretty ear...."

"Please don't, Ssenja." – She withdrew impatiently. "I have more important things to think of. I have letters.... Katerina Petrowna and Nikanor have been arrested."

"You don't say. ... This is bad business."

"It affects me particularly. ... I can't begin to tell you how badly I feel." Suddenly, to her own wonderment, she burst into tears, not so much because her comrades were in prison as for herself.... Would life never bring her anything but failure and this endless chain of sorrow and aggravation? ... What was to become of the work they had so hopefully launched, now these two were gone? If only she herself had remained at her post they would be needing her there.

"Well, look here, Natascha, this won't do at all. You mustn't let go like that! Head up, little girl, this is no time for tears." There was a suggestion of reproof in his tone – he was thoroughly tired of women's tears. "In all probability it is only half as bad as it seems. You'll see, everything will come out nicely in the end."

"It isn't only of them I'm thinking. Everything – what is the sense of living? Nothing but unhappiness!"

"Do you know, that time I worked by the Volga. .. ." Ssenja tried to distract her thoughts by telling her of an episode out of his revolutionary experiences that seemed just the thing for the purpose. Natascha knew every one of them by heart and listened absently. What had all this to do with it? She wanted to speak of her doubts and suffering!

"So you see the difficulties one encounters...and I am still here to tell about it. ... I haven't even lost my enthusiasm for charming women, as you see. Natascha, I don't believe you've heard a word I've spoken!"

"I've been listening, Ssenja. But there is something I must speak to you about.... I'm going to leave to-morrow. I haven't the peace of mind to stay here any longer."

"Nonsense. To go now would be to court danger. I won't allow it. You, with your temperamental nature, are bound to get into trouble.Wait until things have calmed down again. After all they don't need you nearly as much as you think. You may be sure they will manage very nicely without you."

Natascha objected strenuously, trying eagerly to make him appreciate the importance of her person to the movement at this particular moment.

"Please, Natascha, don't be childish. Do you want me to believe they won't he able to find anyone to attend to that? They will take care of it – better than you..."

She read a number of letters to him, every one of them urging her to return, but they failed to impress him.

"And who is it that writes these letters? The hysterical Marja Michailowna ... all woman's talk. If Donzeff had written, I would believe the matter to be serious enough ... but Marja Michailowna don't pay any attention to it. There isn't the slightest excuse for excitement."

Unwittingly Ssenja had touched her sorest spot. Why had not Donzeff written to her? If he had called her to her post even Ssenja would have seen how indispensible she was. In that case she would have left at once, without another thought.

Ssenja should have realized how Donzeff's failure to recall her had pained her. Must he underscore it? He never tried to understand what was going on in her mind, never took the trouble to consider what wounds his careless words inflicted.

When Ssenja left her for his room she was distant and cool, but he paid no attention to it. Alone, dejection and fear laid hold of her once more, fear of her own unwept, unspoken suffering.

She would speak and if Ssenja still failed to understand the break between them would inevitably follow. Anything was better than this hunger for understanding. She would beat her wings against his indifference no longer.

Over the unpleasantly soft carpet of the corridor once more, quickly ~at first but going more slowly as she approached his door. She stopped and listened. All was silent. He was probably fast asleep – he usually slept as soon as his head touched the pillow. She reached for the knob, only to withdraw her hand with a dark flush – so vividly had the picture of his sleep-drenched eyes and his questions at her last visit recalled themselves to her mind.

No, no, anything but that! She could not bear to be misunderstood to-night, and the thought of what was sure to follow.... She hurried along the corridor, past the astonished night porter and back to her room once more. "Now what in the world made her change her mind," the man in the corner wondered curiously. "Quarreled, I suppose," he decided.

XI

AGAIN and again Natascha opened the door of her room to peer anxiously down the corridor, dimly illuminated by a shadowy night light. Everything was empty and still.

A distant cough or the glimpse of a manly figure at the turn of the long hall made her heart leap – no, it was not he. What could it mean? He had never returned as late as this before. Had he met with an accident?

She went to his room once more in the faint hope that he had gone directly to bed without having first stopped in to see her. The porter watched her maneuvers inquisitively, and grinned wickedly whenever she passed him. There was something unspeakably impertinent in his demeanor, but to-day Natascha paid no attention.

Ssenja had left the hotel early that morning, and the fact that he had not, as was his invariable custom, come back for at least a brief visit in the course of the day, served only to increase her uneasiness.

If something had happened to him, he would have telephoned. It was unthinkable that he had stayed at the professor's house so late that he had remained for the night! If that were the case, his lack of consideration for her was unforgivable. It must have occurred to him that she would worry. Would he have left Anjuta in this position?

Natascha threw herself on her bed, only to jump up again and again whenever she thought she heard a sound in the corridor. But there was always the same unfriendly hotel, the same dreary, dimly lighted expanse of carpeted emptiness. But for this beastly carpet she would have heard his foot-steps...someone was snoring ... a cough!

Everything was quiet and empty once more. A church-tower clock in the distance....Dinn. Dinn. Dinn. Dinn.

Half past four. Would this awful night never end?

She clung desperately to a single, forlorn hope...the morning would bring a contrite Ssenja, who would explain in his usual ridiculously childish manner that he had thoughtlessly permitted the professor to detain him until it had been too late to return to the hotel.

"How could I telephone," he would argue. "The professor would have guessed at once. ..."

He would look at her uncertainly, expecting the curtain lecture that usually accompanied such occurrences at home, and would breathe a sigh of relief when Natascha smiled instead, smoothing his recalcitrant hair and kissing his troubled brow. "Don't apologize, Ssenja," she would say, "of course I understand."

"You are so good, so understanding."

Both would breathe easily once more and she would be able to laugh over her foolish fears of the night.

"It's all because of my silly nerves. I shall go to sleep at once, and will probably be fast asleep when he comes. I must leave the door unlocked."

She forced herself to lie down and actually succeeded in falling to sleep, but in her troubled dreams she continued to listen for him. A movement in the corridor found her sitting up in bed, listening with a madly beating heart. No, that was in the next room. Someone was scrubbing the floor and two chamber-maids were conversing in undertones. The gray, misty shimmer of early morning came in through the lowered shades. What time was it? Shortly after eight o'clock.

Natascha got up and dressed with deliberate slowness, listening to every sound and once more opening the door to look out on the corridor, gray and more hopeless still now that the light was out. Better not to have looked out at all, she chided herself, to look out again a moment later because something told her that his familiar figure in its dear, shabby, old hat with its wide brim was at this moment turning the corner of the corridor.

To think that she had doubted her love for him! This night had proved to her how much she loved, how much she needed him. She was prepared to reprove herself severely for the reproaches she had heaped on him for his absence that night, for her ill-tempered resentment and every trace of ill-feeling she had entertained against him. If only he would come! If only nothing had happened to him! Perhaps he had been to her room after she had fallen asleep – the sudden hope robbed her of all caution; with streaming hair, oblivious to the comb in her hand, she ran along the corridor. Hotel guests who met her stepped aside in surprise, and the scrub-woman who was wiping up the floor pushed her pail aside grumbingly. Natascha had stumbled over it in her haste, slopping some of the water over the carpet.

"I'm sorry."

Ssenja's room was empty, the bed untouched.

She sat down on his bed and decided to wait for him there. She felt closer to him in his room; his possessions were there – an old pair of trousers hung over the hack of a chair. Suppose Anjuta had arrived in H. and poor Ssenja had lost his head at the dread thought that they might meet? How could she reassure him? Let him know that he might bring Anjuta to the hotel without fear?

Should she telephone to the professor's house? Perhaps Anjuta was there.

The thought that Anjuta might have arrived drove her precipitously from the bed to examine the room with keen, searching eyes for tell-tale evidence of her own presence. Books? Personal belongings? Finding nothing she returned to her room.

Ten o'clock...half past ten...eleven half past eleven ... one o'clock. Natascha no longer listened for his foot-steps. She assured herself that she had long-ago ceased to expect him at all, that every hope of ever seeing Ssenja again had died. Perhaps he was dead ... that alone would explain his failure to find some way of allaying the fear he must know was driving her mad. Perhaps he had been arrested. But why? Here? Still, this complete silence... something terrible, something incomprehensibly awful must have happened.

Natascha closed her eyes. The light of day blinded and tormented her. Throughout the endlessly long night she had longed for daylight ... because she had hoped. ... And then, just as she had decided to look for him no longer, someone knocked loudly at the door.

"Come in."

A messenger offered her a letter. Her trembling hands could hardly open the envelope.

"I have been through an unexpected and disagreeable experience. At dinner, yesterday, I was seized with such violent abdominal pains that my host put me to bed at once and sent for a physician. My temperature was so high that he at first feared an attack of appendicitis. He gave me two morphine injections to allay the pain which was indescribably severe. To-day, however, I am feeling much more comfortable, and the doctor who was just here assures me that everything is satisfactory and hopes there will be no need of an operation. My temperature is lower, but still above normal; I still suffer pain, but it is bearable. Above all I must have rest, absolute rest ... don't worry about me.

"You can't conceive of kindlier care than that which I am receiving here. The professor and his family took turns at my bed-side all through the night. As a pretext for writing to you I am sending for some books. I told them of a Russian family I had met at the hotel who would get them from my room for me. Please remember, under no circumstances are you to write or to telephone. I kiss your hands.

"Your Ssenja."

"Poor Ssenja." "Any answer?" The messenger was still waiting for her to finish reading the letter.

"Yes ... that is ... wait a moment. I'll get the books at once." She hurried to Ssenja's room as if to get something there, still trying to adjust herself to this new state of affairs. Could she write him a single line telling him of her anxiety and of her love, of her boundless, endless love for him? Could she not reassure him, tell him not to worry about her, that she was satisfied to know that he was alive, that he was there, that he was free.

She would have liked to slip a little note into the package, but dared not. Someone might see, and Ssenja would have to explain. He was so awkward at finding explanations, poor fellow.

She gave the books to the messenger and was alone in her room once more. Her luncheon coffee stood on the table before her, as cold and tasteless as the dejected mood that had overtaken her.

Three long, empty days and restless nights with fantastic, enervating dreams. More than once she woke with a shocked feeling of disaster. "Ssenja! What is happening to him?"

Once she distinctly heard his voice calling to her, and shuddered with a horrified sense of evil premonition.

Several times each day she inquired whether a message – a telegram, perhaps, or a telephone-call, had been left for her. "No, nothing! Was the gentleman keeping the room?"

Of course – the gentleman was ill, and therefore staying with friends where he would receive better care than was possible in a hotel room. ... Why had she given this explanation, as if her position required justification? What did it matter? Did anything matter? Ssenja's illness had undoubtedly taken a turn for the worse after all, for if he were conscious he would have found some means of communicating with her.

Time dragged ... minutes seemed hours....

On the evening of the third day Natascha decided to telephone to the professor's house to inquire concerning Ssenja's condition. She could not spend another night in this awful uncertainty. She quailed at the thought of the tortures its sleepless hours would bring. No matter what came of it, she must know. She rang for the servant.

"Madame wishes?"

She stared undecidedly at the man who answered her summons. A momentary urge had prompted her to call him and she was at a loss to decide on her further course of action. She must be careful to make no mistake.

She ordered tea. "Cream or lemon?"

She watched him disappear with his white, shimmering napkin under his arm and then continued her endless journey up and down the room with a heavy, aching heart, trying to escape the tormenting visions that made her groan and wring her hands in despair.

The clock on the near-by tower struck nine. Natascha rang once more.

The servant stood before her. Could he guess how difficult it was for her to explain to him how and where he was to telephone, what to ask, and what not to ask? Under no condition was he to say "Madame." Only "the Russian friends .. ."

Would he remember? If only he did not say "Madame."

To Natascha that seemed of vital importance.

Again she wandered up and down the room, then sat, tense as the string of a violin, on the edge of a chair. She could feel her heartbeats in her throat so painfully that she could not swallow. In another moment she 'would know – what? The seconds crawled.... What was keeping him?....Five seven ... ten minutes. Why didn't he return? Perhaps the answer was so appalling that he could not bring himself to tell her! Natascha was shaken by icy tremors. A thought flashed through her mind – who knows, in a few moments she might be looking back with longing at this tortuous respite ... with the faint ray of hope it still held.

A knock at the door.

"Come in."

Her eyes pleaded. Hurry! Hurry! But the waiter continued to move with exasperating indolence. His napkin had become entangled in the door-knob, and he stopped fussily to disengage it.

"The gentleman thanks his 'Russian friends' for their kind inquiry (a faintly derisive smile curled the lips under the mustache) and begs me to report that he is feeling a great deal better. He has been out of bed and about his room, and is just preparing to retire."

Natascha neither moved nor spoke.

"Is that all, Madame? Nothing else?"

She was alone.

She had believed that she would sob with rapture if the waiter's answer brought her a single tiny ray of hope for Ssenja's life. Only a short half hour ago she would willingly have given half her life for the message she had just received. Yet here she stood in the middle of her room, without joy...perplexed, rather, and overwhelmed with the growing certainty that she had been deeply offended and abused.

Ssenja, kind, tender, sensitive Ssenja, who feared to inflict the slightest pain on Anjuta, had not moved a finger to put an end to her torment! All these days he had left her without a sign, had not thought it worth while to let her know that he was almost well. Would he have the courage, after this, to tell her that he still loved her? This was more than she could ever forgive.

XII

NATASCHA awoke greatly refreshed after a sound night's sleep. Deep down in the bottom of her soul the conviction that she had been grossly wronged persisted, but she paid no attention. Ssenja was alive and out of danger. In a few days she would see him again. Then, yes, then she would speak to him. She would explain to him that love, thus casually treated, must die, that not even a love as great as theirs could persist and live in such an atmosphere of constant tension. The string that is drawn too tightly is bound to break.

She enjoyed her coffee that morning – the first time since Ssenja's absence – and even smiled at the chambermaid who told her how lovely the weather was outside.

Then she turned her attention to her party letters – incredible that she should have neglected her comrades so long.

She wrote a number of replies and prepared them for mailing, and as she sealed the last envelope some impulse prompted her to make another attempt at the ill-fated pamphlet at which she had worked when first she came here, with so little success. She was in the mood for work. Easily and without constraint the words that had eluded her so provokingly came to her now; thought followed thought in gratifying, logical sequence. Natascha paid no attention to the passage of time until twilight darkened the room.

Then she leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms with a feeling of intense satisfaction. Peace and clearness of mind had come back to her and she was overjoyed to think that she was to finish the pamphlet after all. It was good to have one's mind free for work, not to be sitting forlornly waiting for a message that did not come, a prisoner of absurd worries over Ssenja's condition. He was out of danger and so well taken care of at the professor's house that he forgot even to think of Natascha – a realization that was not without its sting of bitterness. But she drove such ruminations resolutely from her mind.

Life and action were what she wanted now. She wanted to see people again. This hermit's life that she had been leading was senseless and absurd. She decided to go to the post-office to mail her letters and then to have a cup of coffee in one of the brightly lighted cafes nearby.

She was putting on her hat before the mirror when the door opened and Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch stepped into the room.

"Ssenja, you?" she exclaimed. There was more astonishment than joy in her voice.

"Yes, here I am, Natascha, absolutely worn out, as you see, after my illness. The doctor advised me to wait until to-morrow, but I decided to come tonight. I could not wait any longer."

"Come, lie down here at once, Ssenjetschka.

Oh, you poor thing, how thin you are! Your eyes are still sick, Ssenja. Why did you come back before you were quite well, dear?"

"I longed for you so, I was so restless..."

 

"A cushion for your head? Do you want me to take off your shoes? ... Here, let me put this cover over you.... Will you have some tea? Lemon, or would you prefer it with cream? I'll ring and order it at once while I get everything ready." By dint of solicitous fussing Natascha unconsciously tried to hide from herself the astounding fact that she was neither happy nor excited over his return.

Where was the ardent impatience with which she had waited for him? Where the frenzied happiness she had expected to feel when he arrived? Ssenja had come at the wrong moment, scattering the mood of care-free abandon that had come as a release from a period of intolerable nervous tension.

"I'm perfectly comfortable, Natascha. Come, sit here, beside me. It's so good to be With you again!... You had your hat on when I came. Were you going out? Do you go walking when I'm away? Is that how you preserve your incognito?"

"I assure you this would have been the first time. I haven't once put my nose outside the door, all the time you were away. But these letters – see for yourself how many there are – had to be mailed."

"Nevertheless it was foolhardy, just now suppose Anjuta should take it into her head to come? ... That reminds me ... I asked you not to telephone to the professor's house.... I must say you pay surprisingly little attention to my requests. I was afraid of something like this all the while I was ill. After you called up yesterday I hadn't another moment's peace until I had decided to come here – at any cost. Who knows – you might have presented yourself there in person if I had not returned. .. ."

"Ah, then it was this that brought you back to me?"

The brittle edge in her voice made Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch throw a quick, searching glance in her direction.

"No, Natascha, not that alone. I told you how I longed to be with you. .. ."

"Indeed. Ha-ha-ha."

Ssenja had never heard Natascha like this before.

"So you longed to be with me? You, you say this, after letting me wait day after day for a word from you, after you tortured and martyred me with a cruelty so refined, so unspeakable. .. ."

"Natascha! What are you saying? Was it my fault that I became ill? How have I martyred you? In what way? You may be sure nothing was further from my intentions. Why, Natascha, you speak just like Anjuta ... perhaps she is right, after all, when she says that I torture those I love Anjuta ... you ... oh, this is frightful."

He buried his head in his hands. His crumpled figure expressed hopeless resignation to an undeserved fate. Natascha relented at once.

"Ssenja, Ssenjetschka, my dear friend. You were right. I don't know what I am saying, I don't know what is the matter with me. Try to understand what I suffered while you were away, how I feared for your life, not knowing ... Ssenja, the thoughts I thought, the fears I lived through – because I love you, do you hear, Simeon!"

For both of them this name had an especial significance, and he smiled at her as she kneeled by his side and caressed his head.

"Let me kiss your forehead ... how often I dreamed of this! How often I thought of the time when I would kiss the brow of my beloved again!"

"Mad creature, you frightened me with your awful laughter. I know, poor thing, your nerves have had more than enough to bear. Life is beautiful, Natascha. Don't come so close to me, dear."

"It is so good to have you with me again – just to know that you still are ... do you understand?"

"I understand, my love. But I am still weak after my illness and your nearness excites me. The doctor says that the attack was brought about chiefly through my generally nervous condition and ordered absolute rest. You won't be angry, will you, if I ask you not to come so near to me?"

Natascha arose and turned from him at once, lest he read the reproach in her eyes. She wanted human warmth, human tenderness – what he referred to had not entered her head.

While she prepared tea Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch lay on the couch smoking a cigarette and told her of the course his illness had taken, of the professor's family and their friendly solicitude and of his anxious fear that she might take it into her head to come to the professor's home. It had been almost impossible to get in touch with her.

"If you had sent the tiniest note. You might have sent for some books again ... surely you might have thought of something!"

"You know how stupid I am at that sort of thing. So I simply came here as soon as I could drag myself away."

He drank his tea while she read aloud the letters she had received – some disquieting, others encouraging. In general the party seemed to be in a promising condition, with the possibility of important developments in the near future. They discussed these possibilities eagerly, taking into account the position of the opposing wing, and both agreed that the situation would precipitate new conflicts between them, a probability that made Natascha burn to get away at once, back to living, thrilling work.

"Talking here with you makes one forget everything else in the world," Ssenja suddenly interrupted her. "It is getting late and I promised the doctor to be back by half-past seven. Why, it is eight o'clock already. How time flies. I hope the professor does not take it into his head to come and call for me. He is so conscientiously worried about me."

"You are going back? You won't stay here tonight?"

"They wouldn't hear of it. ... Oh, yes, I wanted to tell you. .. ." He tried not to look at her as he spoke and she knew that the disclosure he was about to make would be unpleasant: – "I want.to suggest that you go to W."

"To W? But why?"

"They say it is a very interesting old town with beautiful buildings and quaint streets – and I know you love beautiful surroundings." He spoke to her as if he were urging a child to take some disagreeable medicine. "I don't understand."

"Wouldn't you care to see it?" He looked at her pleadingly. "You see, – oh, I suppose I may as well confess – I won't have a peaceful hour while you are here. I had to write Anjuta about my illness and well, you know Anjuta. She may take it into her head to come here at any moment. Everything considered, I believe you had better go to W. You will be quieter and safer there."

Natascha bowed her head low over her half-finished cup of tea to hide two great tears that welled up into her eyes, but Ssenja saw them.

"I know, sweetheart. It is hard to ask you to leave me again." He stroked her head with tender, if somewhat condescending sympathy.

"Why to W.? The sensible thing to do would be to go directly back to work again."

Her tears had ceased and she looked at him in serious, if somewhat resentful earnestness.

"You misunderstand me. As the library here closes for the holidays at the end of the week I have already told the professor of my intention to spend these days in W. to make the old town's acquaintance. You go to W. and I will follow in a few days."

"This is so strange and so peculiar ... tell me if I am in your way and I will leave at once. That will be easier for everyone."

"Little goose, how can you speak of being in my way? You know that I ask this of you only because of Anjuta. Think if she should suddenly make her appearance here!" To him this was an unanswerable argument. "Can't you imagine her uneasiness, even now? I am moving to the professor's house – that is the understanding. You will go to W. and I shall follow on Friday. Then we will spend the whole day together, nothing to part or to disturb us, no professor. ... Doesn't that sound attractive?"

"But you forget that I must leave on Tuesday. My leave.. ."

"Oh, we'll see about that. If everything seems peaceful on the horizon we will make ourselves a present of a day or two. The important consideration is that we can be together there in absolute safety, with no danger of untoward disturbance. I will be in quite a different state of mind ... here there is always something between us. ... I am nervous right now because I'm afraid the professor may decide to come after me. .. ."

"I shall think it over. We'll speak of it again to-morrow." Natascha hated to submit without a struggle.

"Why to-morrow? I want you to leave to-day. The train leaves ... let me see – I've made a note of it somewhere." He held his note-book close to his near-sighted eyes and turned its pages. "Here it is. There is a train at 10:30 that will get you there at 1:30 to-night. That is quite convenient – an express train. You will have lots of time to get ready. Now, Nataschenka, don't look so unhappy or I will think that I have offended you. ... I feel just as badly to have you go, you may believe me, but it is only for a few days, after all. I shall be with you on Friday. Let me know where you are staying – send a telegram to the usual name, general delivery. Take a room for both of us, and tell them that your husband will join you later." This evidently was an afterthought to compensate Natascha for her disappointment.

"And now, will you help me pack my belongings so that I may have them taken to the professor's house? You'll attend to the hotel bill I suppose. By the way, if you need money – the professor offered to let me have some if I should need it. Don't look so down-hearted, Natascha. It hurts me."

"Never mind me, Ssenja. That will pass. Just lie here on the sofa. I'll do your packing."

Natascha was in his room, tugging at the straps of his suit-case when he entered with a rueful face.

"Why didn't you stay where you were," she scolded. "You see, I've finished packing already."

"I thought you might be sitting here crying that bothered me as I lay there. I had to come over to look after you. I love you, Natascha."

He said this so soberly that Natascha smiled in spite of herself. But the chill did not vanish from her soul. He loved her, but what did if mean to her, this love of his? Stabs, suffering, hurt...

"Come, dress, Ssenjetschka. You will be late and the professor's wife will scold you. .. ."

"I believe you are jealous of her. She is a very old lady... ."

Natascha smiled. "You are a child, Ssenjetschka, you are so ridiculously unable to understand. Now go, take care of yourself and get well. Your manuscript is in the portfolio, here. These are your books. Good-bye, Ssenjetschka." They embraced.

"What a cool duty-kiss."

"JuSt the sort of kiss a well-behaved wife should give her husband. Far be it from me to try to seduce you," she replied teasingly and hurried to call the porter who was to carry his baggage.

At the door Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch embraced her once more and whispered anxiously:

"You aren't angry, are you? My sweet girl, you don't know how much I need you. It is all because of Anjuta. .. ."

At the turn of the corridor he looked back to wave a last farewell. She had the impression that there was something he wanted to say, to explain to her. Natascha waved her handkerchief flippantly.

"Don't fall in love with the professor's wife. Come soon."

At that his face lit up, and, seemingly reassured, he walked around the corner with his old determined stride. Natascha returned to her room along the familiar, detestable carpet, her head bowed in deep thought.

XIII

W. WAS a charming old town. Its beautiful churches, and the hushed, ancient streets tempted tourists away from the beaten paths to stop for a few days in its gentle atmosphere. It was not hard to find a clean, reasonably priced inn where she was given a delightful room, simple and unpretentious in its lines, and without the dusty accessories, carpets and hangings that so often disfigure such places. It was bathed in sunlight from windows that looked out – not as in H. over roofs and chimneys or down into a narrow court-yard – but across a hushed, wide-flung square of venerable houses, every one of which had looked down on the passing of many generations.

When Natascha got up in the morning, and raised the shades to smile out into the hot rays of the springtime sun, she felt the urgent joy of existence racing through her veins again. It was long since she had known that simple joy of living that was wafted in to her on the fragrant spring breezes that played about her face with the spring-song of the birds from the neighboring garden.

"Life! This is life. Why must I live through such torment, when life itself is so lovely? Why?"

She turned to her work at once and lost herself in its pages, writing steadily and smoothly, without difficulty or hesitation. It seemed to her that she could continue to write like this forever. She promised herself, however, a little later in the day, to stroll about the delightful old town with its somnolent houses and its towers and domes whose architectural ornamentation looked to her like lace-work turned to stone. She reveled in this liberty to come and go as she pleased once more, as a pupil enjoys her vacation from the rigors of school life. She smiled as she wandered about the streets, smiled as she ordered her dinner in a modest restaurant, smiled at the hot sun that burned her cheeks, and was still smiling when she tumbled into bed with that delicious feeling of physical and mental weariness that comes at the end of a day's pleasurable occupation.

On Friday Natascha went to the post-office to ask for mail. A number of letters had been forwarded, among them one from Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch. What did it mean – new disappointment? Perhaps he had decided not to come after all....

She put it with the rest, unopened, into her leather bag.

In the tiny park, where birds were vieing with one another in their cheerful twittering, hiding in the rich, dark green of the evergreen that lent a colorful background to the rose-red of almond and apricot blossoms, Natascha opened her letters.

Her comrades were urging her to return, for the political situation was approaching a crisis that should find everyone at his post. They were all at a loss for an explanation of her persistent silence, and were becoming somewhat anxious and perplexed.

She must go back, no matter what Ssenja's letter had to say. She almost wished that he were not coming.... she would leave on the following day.

With this secret hope in the background of her mind she opened his letter last of all.

But it appeared that Ssenja had written immediately after her departure, dimly conscious of the shadow that rested on their love. The letter was unexpectedly tender.

"The hurt in your eyes when I saw you last still haunts me. ... I feel like a criminal. ... You will never know what your love has been to me. The assurance of your love means more than I can tell, more than mere words can express. The sun would go out of my life if I should have to live without you."

Not so long ago, Natascha would have choked over a letter like this. With her hands pressed over her eyes she would have feasted hungrily on the protestations of love it contained. Now she smiled, a little ruefully, a little bitterly. Too late. Too late.

A post-script added that he was counting the hours till they would meet again.

She dropped the letter into her bag beside the others, her mind wandering back to Wanjetschka – one of the letters had mentioned him in passing – as she did so. She thought of him shame-facedly, conscious of the post-card she had neglected to send. The dear, good fellow. What a comrade he had been in her hour of need!

She went to a stationery shop at once, chose an attractive post-card and sent a light, facetious greeting, promising a speedy return and assuring him that she was homesick, terribly homesick for all of them. Even for Donzeff.

It was true. She was longing to see them all again, her coworkers and comrades.

As she walked back to the inn the long corridor with its irritating red carpet and the man-servant who dozed at the table came back to her mind. She saw herself at Ssenjetschka's door with hair flying....a mendicant....

"Better not think of it.... How degrading it was!"

A telegram had come during her absence. "Coming to-morrow, 1:30 A. M. Meet me at train."

"My husband will arrive to-night," she told the clerk in passing as she went to her room, determined to use the last hours of uninterrupted freedom to finish her pamphlet.

XIV

HALF an hour before the specified time Natascha was at the station, only to find that the bulletin-board announced a delay in the train's arrival. The porter could give no explanation but a gentleman nearby, overhearing her questions, lifted his hat and volunteered the required information. The train would be forty-five minutes late. A cloud-burst had washed out the road-bed further up the line. No, no one had been hurt. He was waiting for his mother who was to arrive on the same train.

Natascha regarded him a little more closely. He was tall with a gray mustache and black, lively eyes. Altogether he appealed to her at once.

He continued to speak. His mother was coming to visit him, after an absence of almost two months. That was a very long time. He wished his mother could live with him permanently.

"A mother's love is the only love that is unselfish, the only love I can respect."

He spoke with the frank lack of reticence that characterized the people of his southerly region.

"Would it be bold to ask for whom you are waiting?" he continued.

"A friend? Your husband?"

"My husband." It had slipped past her lips, in spite of herself and she felt herself reddening with embarrassment.

"How long have you been married?"

"Well, now, that depends...." Natascha laughed.

"Aha, I understand, I understand. I have my own views on this subject. Usually women disagree with me, but in my eyes a wife and a sweetheart are one and the same thing. On the contrary: a free union fetters a man much more than a legitimate marriage. I am not referring to legal, formal bonds, of course, but to inner, moral obligations...this lack of freedom, this dependence on another's inner experiences, the eternal dissatisfaction of the woman one loves, the spiritual bills she presents....

"She is always being hurt by trifles. I have gone through the entire gamut of such an experience. could tell you ... by the way, are you a German?"

"No," Natascha laughed. "A Russian and a writer. You may speak freely. I am not afraid of life and truth."

"A writer?" He raised his hat respectfully. "I have the greatest respect for a woman who pursues a profession. My mother was a teacher. But that has nothing to do with the relations of men and women to each other. Lies, nothing but lies on either side, lies for the peace of mind of the loved one, lies from fear, from habit. ... Are men and women ever themselves after they are married? Mind you, I make no difference between legal marriage and that voluntary bond that holds two persons together. Are they ever themselves when they are together, as they are with their friends and colleagues, or with other sexually indifferent persons? Do you ever fully express your real thoughts and feelings when you are with your husband? Can you give full play to your moods or to those impulses that are, possibly, the best that is in you? No. It is all play-acting, pose and prevarication.. ."

He piled up indictment after indictment against marriage with reckless, somewhat disjointed abandon, but Natascha believed she understood. She amended and supplemented his speculations with an illustration here and a pertinent remark there, so that he nodded appreciatively at the fullness of her comprehension. "That is it. That is it!" he agreed.

Natascha spoke hastily and sketchily, as if she were hurrying to tell this stranger everything she had thought and suffered. ... He listened to her gravely, looking steadily into her face as she talked, now and then adding an apt word to her story. It was Natascha who first noticed that the hands of the clock were approaching the time scheduled for the train's arrival. How extraordinarily quickly the time had passed on the dismal, gray station.

"I am truly grateful to the good fortune that presented me with this opportunity. I will not be so indiscreet as to ask for your name, but may I assure you, without flattery, that this is the first time I have had the privilege of meeting a young woman with so mature an outlook on life? You note that I say young: I have often met older women who think as I do, though they rarely care to speak of it. But they know much... my mother is a case in point.

"My mother is an extraordinary woman, and I am proud and happy to be able to give her every pleasure that money can buy, now that she is old. I worked for it with my own hands. I am a grape farmer. I was the youngest of eight brothers – began life as an errand boy in a wine cellar. My mother was a teacher. We never knew our father."

As the time for the train's arrival drew nearer, the station platform had gradually filled with waiting people. The train was approaching. Natascha once more shook hands with her new acquaintance, who respectfully lifted his hat and raised her hand as if to kiss it, but then desisted.

Their eyes met for a brief glance, then Natascha was lost in the crowd that stood by the tracks.

The train rolled into the station, filling it with a dense cloud of smoke.

"At last? Have you been impatient, poor girl? How is my Natascha? You are looking splendidly ... rosy-cheeked and well ... like a little girl. Have you been homesick? This last hour in the train dragged so endlessly, I almost got out and walked."

He was not afraid to embrace her here, he even kissed her fondly and took her arm, launching into a recital of the shrewd maneuvers it had taken to escape the professor's all-too-insistent hospitality.

"Here we will be alone together, just we two, with plenty of time to talk over everything that troubles us. Another honeymoon – how many will that be, Natascha .. .?" He pressed her hand ecstatically.

"My dearest, I am so madly happy to see you!"

Natascha smiled, and looked at him as unemotionally as one regards a stranger. She was amazed at her complete aloofness. Why had this never been possible before?

At the station entrance they approached Natascha's casual acquaintance of the station platform, tenderly guiding a tiny gray-haired woman who clung devotedly to his arm. Natascha, afraid of the questions and the suspicious cross-examination, the tiresome explanations and denials that recognition would mean, pretended not to see him, though she secretly rebelled against this slavery to the moods and whims of another. She was becoming thoroughly tired of it.

In the cab that took them to their destination Ssenja caught her in his arms and sought her lips.

"Say you love me, dear. I have been so lonesome, so afraid. ... You were hurt, weren't you? It was a mistake to send you here. This idiotic nervousness of mine! You know one loses all sense of proportion when one has been ill. You understood that, didn't you, Natascha?"

"Yes, I realized that."

"Then you are not angry? You are not as happy as usual over my coming." His eyes sought hers questioningly. "Perhaps you no longer care?.."

He said it softly, with a choked gasp, as if he dared not utter the thought that had suddenly come to him.

"I care for you? I don't care for you at all!" She tried to drive away his depression with her bantering tone, but she felt that it lacked conviction. Ssenja sighed unhappily and fell back into his seat, and Natascha felt a sharp stab of pity. She was honestly sorry to hurt him. To distract him she told him of the letters she had received, and he was soon listening with undivided interest. By the time they reached the inn they were arguing with the complete absorption with which two colleagues discuss a matter of mutual interest.

*****

The sun stood high in the heavens when Natascha raised the shade and opened the window the morning after.

"Look, Ssenja, how beautiful! Aren't these houses charming? Those birds...spring is here!"

"To be sure. ... And I am here with you in paradise."

He came to her and threw his arm about her shoulder. Silently, each busy with his own thoughts, they stood by the window. Natascha's soul was calm and unruffled. She had the queer sensation that it was not she, at all, but some one else who was experiencing this, while she was standing by and looking on. For Ssenja she felt the sympathetic affection one feels for an agreeable, more or less casual acquaintance. She had accepted his caresses that night with a spirit of somewhat bored submission; she had not once responded to his passion. Under one pretext or another she tried to distract his attention.

"You must be more careful, Ssenjetschka, or you will be ill again. Let me tell you what I saw yesterday." She treated him as an older person treats an unreasonable child. It was she, not he, who struck the note that dominated their intercourse. Hitherto she had been his obedient echo. Now, unconsciously, it seemed to her, he followed while she led the way.

Ssenja, for his part, was entirely happy. He had been in mortal terror of Natascha's "psychological dissertations" ever since he had left her, and was highly gratified to find her actually cheerful and not at all inclined to dwell on his shortcomings. Though he had never been able to comprehend her inexplicable moods, they often made him acutely unhappy. They burdened him with a sense of wrong-doing. He was at no time conscious of anything but the desire to make her completely happy, only to find that every effort he made to understand and please her seemed somehow to complicate the situation. It had been just so with Anjuta. Now this same feeling of inadequacy to cope with the vagaries of the female mind was disturbing his relations with Natascha with increasing frequency.

Here, in W., they seemed to have found firm ground again. They had found each other again-to use one of Natascha's favorite expressions – and Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch was happy and lighthearted in consequence.

Breakfast was jolly. Ssenja ate enormously, and insisted that Natascha would make a splendid housewife. He was hugely delighted with his new quarters. Natascha played the hostess charmingly; she was entertaining an agreeable, welcome guest.

"I thought I should be able to manage a longer stay here, but the library opens on Tuesday and the professor invited a number of guests to go with us to examine some material out of the archives. For Tuesday, unfortunately. That means I should leave here on Monday."

"Monday? That would suit me excellently."

"What do you mean?"

"That in that case I shall also leave on Monday. You know how conscience-stricken I feel, sitting here in idleness when they are waiting for me so anxiously at home."

"What difference will a day or two make? I don't see why we should be in such a hurry to leave here?"

"A day or two may make a great deal of difference in a tense political situation .. ."

"You know how the comrades exaggerate."

Natascha relapsed into silence. As usual, he thought only of himself. She had never been able to persuade him to give her a single hour of his time. He must go. ... Anjuta expected him his will was law and there was no relenting, no appeal from his decision. That she, too, had responsibilities and important claims on her time, that every added hour she spent with him was a sacrifice, a loss to herself and to the movement – that he had never been willing to admit.

"DO you remember," she reflected, "the time we met in N.-two years ago?"

"To be sure. Why?"

"Do you remember how sick I became while we were there? I lay alone in a hotel room with a high fever, and there was not a soul that knew me in the entire city. ... Do you remember how I begged you to stay with me one day more ... just one day more? What did it mean to Anjuta – a single day out of a life-time with you? You know how rarely I ask for anything, but I begged and pleaded with you then. But you left me and I remained behind, ill, delirious... ."

Ssemjon Ssemjonowitsch looked crestfallen.

"Why speak of that now?"

"To show you how much a day means where you are concerned. Only my needs and my wishes count for nothing. Is that your conception of equality?" Natascha spoke with unusual calm.

"You can't truly say that I disregard your wishes. Aren't you just a little unjust, my dear? When have I acted against your will? Tell me? Is it fair to prefer charges without giving facts? If I act unjustly, I do it unconsciously, against my will. You can't truthfully say that I am against equality for man and woman."

"Well, let's not discuss it. It isn't important. I just happened to think of it and mentioned it."

She tried to change the subject, but Ssenja answered absently and paced the room thoughtfully for a while. Suddenly his face cleared and the gentle smile that Natascha had loved so dearly played about his lips, the quizzical look was in his eyes as he looked at her over his glasses.

"Well, my dear, I am off to the barber's. When I get back, we will look at the town together."

He went over to her, kissed her eyes and then her hands with sober tenderness, and hurriedly left the room.

"Hurry back," she called after him, "or it will be dark before we start."

He reappeared much sooner than she had expected.

"Here already? Don't tell me that you have been to the barber's."

He looked at her with that mysterious, quizzical look still in his eyes.

"What have you been up to?" Natascha laughed in spite of herself, and was curious, too. Thus mothers smile at the mysterious secrets of their children.

"Guess."

"How can I guess. Tell me, Ssenjetschenka."

She shook him with mock impatience.

He stuck out his tongue at her like a child.

"I sent the professor a telegram."

"A telegram? What for?"

"To tell him that I shall not return before Friday."

"Ssenja!"

He had expected Natascha to fall about his neck in radiant appreciation of his thoughtfulness. Instead she dropped her hands hopelessly at her side and looked at him with a strange expression on her face.

"You sent a telegram, changed the day of departure without consulting me? How could you? How dared you?...

"But, Natascha..."

"When you knew that I must leave here on Tuesday, at the latest."

"Well, I must say, I simply can't make you out. Weren't you offended when I said I wanted to leave on Monday? For your sake, to show you how much I want to please you, to prove to you that you mean more to me than my work or anything else. ... I thought this would please you ... and now..."

He bristled with righteous resentment.

Natascha tried to explain, but suddenly desisted. What was the use? They would always think and speak past one another. They seemed neither to hear nor to understand each other any longer. Ssenjetschka wanted only to please her. In his eyes the telegram to the professor was an extraordinary concession, a proof of the greatness of his love for her. Formerly... ah, how happy this would have made her. Too late. Too late.

Somehow she would have to get out of this impossible situation.

She rapidly figured up what it would cost them to stay and showed him, as regretfully as she could, that it would be reckless for them to remain beyond Wednesday. Their finances simply did not permit it. Then, too, what would the professor think? Suppose Anjuta should come to H....

She spoke like an experienced mother who knows the soul of her child. Not a word of herself. She even thanked him for wanting to spend a few more days with her.

His ruffled feathers gradually smoothed out, so that he was in a cheerful, yes, delighted mood once more when they walked through the village streets, arm in arm, a few hours later.

Natascha showed him the sights of the town, with the warm appreciation with which one regards a delightful relative who is an agreeable, but by no means essential, part of one's life.

XV

"Do you know, Natascha, I believe these have been the happiest days we have spent together for a very long time," Ssenja said as he locked his trunk. He was leaving an hour before Natascha.

"Do you think so?"

"Don't you? There were moments, it is true, when I could not quite understand you. Sometimes I felt, for an instant, that you were getting away from me. But as soon as I listened into your soul (he was using Natascha's words) I came closer to you again, and this strangeness disappeared. Isn't that so? You have been cheerful, you laughed more than usual. I don't remember having seen you so happy... oh, for ever so long...I am going away happy...almost happy. .. ."

The last words came like an afterthought. He suddenly knelt down before her and buried his face in her lap....

"Ssenja, what is it?..."

"I can't help it. A dreadful feeling sometimes takes hold of me, a fear that I am to lose you....

I know it is stupid, but when it takes hold of me I am as helpless as a little child left alone by its mother in a great dark woods. Is it possible, Natascha, that we should ever become indifferent to one another? Tell me, truly, dear, do you still love me?"

His eyes searched hers with an intensity she had never seen in them before.

"Ssenja, this isn't at all like you. Are you beginning to entertain my psychological misgivings, silly Ssenjetschka ?"

She laughed at him. Had he noticed that she had not answered his question?

"Yes, it seems, does it not, that we have exchanged roles?"

He spoke thoughtfully and softly stroked her hand.

"There is something I can't explain. What is there that is not as it used to be? Nothing ... and yet...there is a difference. I am so afraid..."

Natascha was struck. Was it possible that now, when everything was over, he was beginning to understand her? Did he see what she herself was afraid to recognize?

"We, who have lived through so much together in these years of our friendship could not become strange to each other. ... I am too fond of you for that. ... You have become my little brother, my trusted friend. .. ." She stroked his head, the clever, thoughtful head she had once loved so agonizingly.

"Farewell, my dear, beloved..." her heart contracted and she could not stem the tears that rushed to her eyes. She was parting from the great love that had been hers, from the suffering it had brought her, from the happiness that had been theirs together. Gone ... gone ... never to return again.

Natascha's tears were the usual, inevitable end of every parting. They comforted Ssenja.

Everything, then, was as it had always been.

*****

Natascha stood on the station platform. Ssenja was already in the car. The train would start in a moment.

"Now you are going East and I am going West.... When and where shall we meet again? Not soon, I'm afraid. But we have seen each other again and have gathered fresh courage for the future. It was wonderful, was it not, Natascha? It was wonderful!" He wanted a word of confirmation from her lips.

"Yes. The town is charming – a poem. I am leaving here with new thoughts – I stole them from you."

"Don't try to flatter me, as if you hadn't a clever little head of your own. You will write to me, won't you, as long as I am in H.?"

"Certainly."

"I am already dreaming of meeting you again."

"By the way," she interrupted him in a businesslike tone, "will you formulate more exactly the proposition you asked me to take up with the comrades at home?"

The door slammed.

"Good-bye, Natascha. Till we meet again.... I am so grateful to you. .. ."

"What for?"

"For everything. ... Give me your hand. Don't be unhappy! We will meet again, soon. You must go back, dear. The train is moving."

Ssenja leaned far out of the window for a last glimpse of the girl as she stood on the station platform. He waved the familiar old gray hat that had always seemed so touching to her. Queer that she had not noticed how shabby it was before. That flabby brim hanging down over his face.

The train was vanishing into darkness. Natascha did not peer after it with hungry eyes as she used to do, feeling that the soul had left her body to hurry after it. She went to the outer station door with others who had seen their friends to the train, wondering anew at her composure. A leave-taking like a thousand others, with the depressing feeling of finality that one always had on such occasions. Nothing more. But Natascha knew that this was the end. They had taken their last farewell from one another.

Some time in the future life might throw them together for common work again. Only that. The great love that had throbbed in her heart all these years was gone forever. Nothing, neither tenderness nor pleading, not even understanding, could bring it back to life again.

Too late! In the train her thoughts were already far away from Ssenja and the love she had borne him. Her head was heavy with cares. There were her papers – she would look them over at once, destroy some, transcribe others into code, file some for future reference....

She was back at her work again. Long, long ago there had been a great, wonderful, beautiful love, – but it was gone. It had seeped out of her heart, through the countless tiny wounds that Ssenja, in his man-like failure to understand, had inflicted.