I HAVE seen Vera to-day. She has begun to plague me with her jealousy. Princess Mary has taken it into her head, it seems, to confide the secrets of her heart to Vera: a happy choice, it must be confessed!

“I can guess what all this is leading to,” said Vera to me. “You had better simply tell me at once that you are in love with her.”

“But supposing I am not in love with her?”

“Then why run after her, disturb her, agitate her imagination!... Oh, I know you well! Listen—if you wish me to believe you, come to Kislovodsk in a week’s time; we shall be moving thither the day after to-morrow. Princess Mary will remain here longer. Engage lodgings next door to us. We shall be living in the large house near the spring, on the mezzanine floor. Princess Ligovski will be below us, and next door there is a house belonging to the same landlord, which has not yet been taken... Will you come?”...

I gave my promise, and this very same day I have sent to engage the lodgings.

Grushnitski came to me at six o’clock and announced that his uniform would be ready to-morrow, just in time for him to go to the ball in it.

“At last I shall dance with her the whole evening through... And then I shall talk to my heart’s content,” he added.

“When is the ball?”

“Why, to-morrow! Do you not know, then? A great festival—and the local authorities have undertaken to organize it”...

“Let us go to the boulevard”...

“Not on any account, in this nasty cloak”...

“What! Have you ceased to love it?”...

I went out alone, and, meeting Princess Mary I asked her to keep the mazurka for me. She seemed surprised and delighted.

“I thought that you would only dance from necessity as on the last occasion,” she said, with a very charming smile...

She does not seem to notice Grushnitski’s absence at all.

“You will be agreeably surprised to-morrow,” I said to her.

“At what?”

“That is a secret... You will find it out yourself, at the ball.”

I finished up the evening at Princess Ligovski’s; there were no other guests present except Vera and a certain very amusing, little old gentleman. I was in good spirits, and improvised various extraordinary stories. Princess Mary sat opposite me and listened to my nonsense with such deep, strained, and even tender attention that I grew ashamed of myself. What had become of her vivacity, her coquetry, her caprices, her haughty mien, her contemptuous smile, her absentminded glance?...

Vera noticed everything, and her sickly countenance was a picture of profound grief. She was sitting in the shadow by the window, buried in a wide arm-chair... I pitied her.

Then I related the whole dramatic story of our acquaintanceship, our love—concealing it all, of course, under fictitious names.

So vividly did I portray my tenderness, my anxieties, my raptures; in so favourable a light did I exhibit her actions and her character, that involuntarily she had to forgive me for my flirtation with Princess Mary.

She rose, sat down beside us, and brightened up... and it was only at two o’clock in the morning that we remembered that the doctors had ordered her to go to bed at eleven.