It may be said that it was not until after the ending of Joseph's weak tragedy that Ivan passed into his third, and final, mental stage. As a boy, he had known very intimately the inner buoyancy of youth, hope, and faith in the joy of life. After the marriage of Nathalie, and his subsequent precipitation, had come those wild rebellions of the soul, the violent protestations, the young and petted cynicisms, that are the inevitable accompaniment of the inevitable hour of disenchantment. This phase, however great its length, must, nevertheless, resolve itself at last into one of two others: the quiet complacency of a renewed but gentler optimism; or a cynicism tried, real, deep-rooted, unhappy but irresistible. Be this state a sign of weakness or of strength, it was the one to which Ivan felt himself driven, willy-nilly, by all the force of his experience. From that doubt of complete disillusion, that confusion of thought and loss of all happy confidence which is one of the results of the long-continued bread-struggle wherein disinterested philosophy can have no part, Ivan had moved, by insensible stages, far into the kingdom of the unredeemable pessimist.

To him, looking ruefully back along the years of his man-struggle, it seemed as if each trial, each disappointment, had been built on a variation of a single theme. Of the several friendships that had been his, all, after running an uncertain course, had come to violent or unhappy ends. And in the grave of each was buried a little and a little more of his natural faith and optimism. And yet—not all! One friendship, the first, had lapsed naturally, through separation. Indeed, Ivan still sometimes heard from the companion of his first Petersburg days—Vladimir de Windt. Had there, however, been no letters, he could still always have followed his comrade's track; for de Windt—having left the army many years since, to enter on a diplomatic career, had been climbing, steadily, and was already, at thirty-five, on the threshold of the Council chamber. Over this fact Ivan could unfeignedly rejoice; for already Russia, high and low, was discussing the merits and the probable future of this young man.

But of the others,—that group of men, the two women, who had sat at the door of his soul's sanctuary—what of them? Nathalie, first: then Zaremba, Anton Rubinstein, Laroche his comrade of the Conservatoire, Ostrovsky his collaborator, Balakirev, Merelli, Joseph, finally, Irina,—her soul still flaunting its rags before the gaze of the world, while her brother and those student companions of her honest days and Ivan's first success, labored in distant prison-mines, self-victims of unsuccessful treason: what of these? Which one remained to him?—Ah! there were two: old Nicholas, the unswerving, the devoted; and Kashkine, who owed him nothing, who had given—was to give—so much! Why was it that they counted so lightly in the scales against these others? Who can say? who explain that perverseness of human nature which will not value what it has, but must drop it by the way to stretch out unavailing hands for the fleeting ungraspable? This, certainly, was what Ivan did; and his face came in time so to show the bitterness of his heart, that Joseph, rising stealthily from his unknown depth, dreaming of finding help from his once benefactor, twice beheld the depth of Ivan's habitual frown, and stole away without making appeal to the heart-hungry man who now, year by year, labored alone in his desolate palace.

The years of 1873, 1874, and 1875 passed slowly, bringing rich harvest of Ivan's great gift to the music-world of Europe. Russia only would have none of him; wherefore he, deeply resentful, held every individual of his race at bay, until, at length, an incident, dreamed of long ago but also long since despaired of, broke successfully into a solitude that was becoming dangerous.

On Wednesday October 15th, in the last-named year, Ivan, book in hand, sat idling over his dÉjeuner, when gray-headed Piotr entered, quivering with excitement, to announce that a great lady waited in the drawing-room and would not be denied a sight of His Excellency. So, three minutes later, Ivan found himself face to face with the secret lady of his heart.

"Nathalie!—Princess!"

"'Nathalie,' please, dear cousin.—Ivan, I am in great trouble, and I have come to you for help."

"Help!—Trouble!" Ivan's low voice faltered. "Ah!—Can I make it right for you?"

The woman before him shook her head, sadly. "No one can ever make it right, Ivan."

"What is it, Nathalie?" In his secret mind, he was just murmuring her name, over and over again, and blessing the woe that had brought her to him.

"For the present I am here, in Moscow; and my children are with me.—I might have sent for you sooner, by note, Ivan. I ought, I suppose. But I waited too long, and so came myself!" And she looked at him, her lips smiling, her troubled eyes full of anxiety.

Even after all the years, Ivan read her well enough not to answer that smile. Instead, he led her, scarcely protesting, into the dining-room; despatched the amazed but delighted Piotr for fresh tea and something to eat; and, when they were alone, sat for a moment lost in contemplation of her, while she waited, wearily, for him to pick up the thread of their talk.

Her appearance, charming to any other man, startled and momentarily saddened Ivan. He marvelled, indeed, at the emotion roused in him by her face: the face that he had pictured as forever changeless, but which, he now perceived, time had dealt with more cruelly than with his own. Madame FÉodoreff was, indeed, a woman sufficiently beautiful, sufficiently distinguished, to be looked at thrice in any assemblage. Yet her every feature, the exquisite, pearly skin, most of all the once sparkling, now deeply-seeing eyes, spoke of a long and difficult drama of life.

These things passed through his mind as he gave his order and Piotr left the room. For some moments more he was silent. Then, rousing himself, almost unwillingly, from his contemplation, he spoke.

"You should be able to guess, Nathalie, how much your coming means: how deeply it touches me. To think that you should still have confidence!—How many years is it since the winter of your dÉbut?"

Though he asked it lightly, he saw the shiver that ran over the woman at his side. "We must not count years," she said, softly. "Indeed, Ivan, now that I am here, I find it hard to explain my idea in coming.—I am alone in Moscow—virtually hiding. And I can tell you very little of my reason.—Still, you can guess, at least, that my marriage—has been—unsuccessful.—I have my children. I adore them; yet I have left their father, and so injured them forever.—That is about all I can tell you.—Up—"

"Princess, I beg of you!—"

"No, let me finish, Ivan! Up to the time of my mother's death, I never wholly realized the truth of affairs.—She managed, somehow, to shield me.—During her last years, Ivan, she regretted my marriage more than any act of her life.—Indeed, I think it was the one thoroughly cruel thing she ever did.—Since she went, I have been forced to understand: to face black truth. And so, when the time came that even my babies were beginning to ask me questions about—incidents—and—and persons who frequented my house, I had to come away. I know how the world regards a runaway wife; yet I believe that I am not universally blamed. I hope not. But, just now, it is impossible for me to face the world. I have been alone for some weeks. I came to you to-day just for—just for companionship, I suppose."

As she paused, Ivan leaned forward and impetuously took her delicately gloved hand into his firm clasp. But the light that glowed in his eyes, he wisely managed to conceal. "'Companionship,' Nathalie?—Let us give it a better term: 'Friendship!' Surely that is permissible now, between us. Believe me, anything that a man can do, I will do for you. You have told me far more than I should have asked.—I can never take the place of—of Madame Dravikine. But I can make you feel, perhaps, that the world is not utterly lonely for you: that there is some one who is made happier and better by your mere living presence."

Towards the end, his tone had become slightly uncertain; and Madame FÉodoreff, who was prepared for an emergency, and whose schooling in the world had been thorough, hastily interposed. Moreover, as she began to speak, old Piotr entered with an extemporaneous luncheon that did credit to a purely bachelor establishment. As he set the things down before the unexpected visitor, she, looking her host squarely in the eye, and with a manner friendly but quite without sentiment, observed: "You understand very nicely, Ivan! That, without knowing it, was precisely what I came to say. Friendship!—It is something that has never yet entered my life: very probably through my own fault."

Ivan's answer was a smile; for he had no special wish to take advantage of this opening for banalities. While the Princess ate, therefore, he played with his knife and fork, and they bandied the necessary phrases of conventionality while the thoughts of both were busy with intimate matters. Already Ivan, high-hearted, knew that the long-worshipped image of the young Nathalie was gone, forever, from the chapel of his mind; and that, already, in the empty niche, stood the shadow of another form: one less fairy-like, less bewitching; but more suited to the reverence of reason, and worthier of the homage he found himself still so ready to outpour.

Indeed that first visit, self-restrained, brief, uneventful as it was, proved more momentous to both man and woman than either, beforehand, would have dreamed possible. Their early passion for each other both believed to lie buried deep beneath the weight of years of separation and difference of occupation and environment. Vanity! The first hour of real reunion showed them both that the old feeling had been far from dead: was, in truth, sleeping so lightly that a touch must rouse it again. Four hours after Nathalie's departure, Ivan found himself at the piano, pouring out his heart in such a burden of passionate melody as had rarely rushed from him, even in his moments of inspiration. And the long hours of the sleepless night served absolutely to loosen the fetters of his self-repression; for in the growing glory of the dawn, he watched also the glorious resurrection of the one great love of his life. Again, after many years, she lived in him: in every thought and hope and dream; not now as a child, potent, through ignorance, to wound him past endurance; but as a woman, beautiful through time and sorrow, magnificent in the wreck of her woman's life. Still he knew well that if love was to be his, it must remain for a long time under the guise of friendship. What he did not acknowledge to himself, was the fact that all the world was to share something of this great and painful joy. He was still ruthless in the service of his single god. And this love, like every other factor of his life, must serve as food for his genius. It was Nathalie who had unconsciously turned him, protesting, to his work. It was to be through her also that he reached the height of his career: his perfection of maturity. For she was the inspiration of the "Tosca Symphony."

If Ivan had suddenly risen from the depths to the heights, the cause of his change was also to know powerful emotion on his behalf. In the days of her far-away youth, Nathalie Dravikine's affection for her cousin had been as strong as any her school-girl nature was capable of. But when, after her hurried and loveless marriage, she was forced into, a revulsion of exquisite misery to a breadth of pain and repression that forced her naturally light nature into incredible development, the comparatively petty grief of Ivan's loss was forgotten. News of his disgrace reached her months after the fact, and but a few weeks before the birth of her first child,—now long since dead. And in her then morbid and unnatural condition, she had peevishly brushed all thought of her cousin aside, accounting his unhappiness as small beside her own.

Many years later, when the long period of her bitter schooling had moulded her into something far finer than her youth had promised; when, also, she had brought the art of concealment to its height of perfection; the memory of her lost cousin's gallant and loyal devotion recurred to her, together with the surmise that she had been the cause of his dismissal from the army, and the still more amazing fact that he was now beginning to be recognized as an incalculable power in the world of music. An interview with Vladimir de Windt confirmed her first belief; a symphony concert at the Conservatoire hall, fixed the second. And then, suddenly, she discovered that the man who had sought ruin because of her loss, and who had risen, pedestalled, from that ruin to another and a greater personality, had won a place in her heart from which he was not to be driven.

For many years, now, his spoken name had never failed to stir her secretly. Though, in the ordinary sense of the word, she was hardly musical, her emotional nature had been too fully developed for her not to recognize the power that breathed through Ivan's tempestuous or fairy-like compositions. She began to make his work her peculiar study; and never a phrase of it but touched her deeply, strangely; in spite of which, mondaine that she must always be, it was not till she heard that he had inherited the title and wealth of his father, that she began sentimentally to exalt her undefined feeling for him.

Certainly, had it not been for his present social status, Nathalie FÉodoreff, even in the desolation that had followed the tragic climax of her years of married martyrdom, would never have sought that first meeting with her cousin. Yet she was not to be judged upon that fact alone. She was a devoted mother. She had been a faithful wife to a man who had lowered his manhood to a level beneath that of the very beasts. She had borne with him through degradation, insult, once or twice physical violence; and this not only because Russian orthodoxy gives no quarter to a rebellious wife, whatever the provocation. But when that time arrived when her duty to her children and her duty to her wretched husband could no longer be compatible; when the two little girls remaining to her out of five children, began to question the relationship between their governess and their father, Nathalie hesitated no longer. Seizing upon one of her husband's frequent absences, she completely dissolved her establishment, told the furious, vile-tongued Frenchwoman quite calmly that her services were no longer necessary; and, that evening, with her children, two servants, and her personal effects, disappeared, absolutely, beyond the ken of Prince or police.

In Moscow she took a small apartment, in a quiet quarter of the city; and there, masking her unhappiness behind an habitual languor, strove heroically to readjust herself to life. Finally, as the result of a momentary, rebellious impulse, the period of her friendship with Ivan began. Neither of the two had been quite prepared for the after-effects of their first quiet and commonplace meeting. Nevertheless when, on the following Sunday, Ivan's card was brought to her in her little salon, he was not refused. His cousin greeted him placidly, and he made speedy friends with the two quaint children whom he found with her, and who served thenceforward to keep the facts of her existence always in evidence; but who could not, unfortunately, prevent the existence of secret emotions, either in their mother or in the beloved new "uncle" who proved such a mine of sweetmeats and toys.

After Ivan's first call, Nathalie found herself grappling with the question as to whether he must be absolutely dismissed, or merely held at arm's-length. Into this discussion pride entered so largely that she presently determined to do neither thing; but to conceal her own impotence beneath an armor of cousinliness. Thenceforth Ivan found himself, at first to his delight, later to his baffled chagrin, treated with an informal friendliness, a guileless intimacy, that perfectly answered its designer's purpose, though the helpless recipient chafed, rebelled, stayed away, suffered agonies of jealous rage, and finally, one blustery day, presented himself again in the Gagarinesky, wrapped in a manner impenetrably suave and bland. He had read her at last; and was satisfied. Thus, their companionship entered upon its best period. Intellectually it was perfect. Sentimentally, though decorum was never transgressed, there came for each certain minutes of unavoidable revelation that were eminently satisfactory to the other. And in time their intimacy reached a point where Ivan began actually to confide musically in her:—a woman!

The twilight hours which he spent at the piano in her salon, while she listened dreamily to his interpretations or improvisation, were the finest they knew; and wrought a beautiful pediment for their temple to Amicitia. The difference in their natures served for each as a stimulant. To Ivan, her sympathetic comments, frequent praise, rare criticism, lacked absolutely nothing. Nathalie early perceived that she was beholding a genius at work: a giant engaged upon labor too stupendous for irreverent contemplation. And from him and his music she gained the medicine her bruised heart and broken nerves most needed. For Ivan, in the growth of his great love for her, unconsciously brewed an elixir of power from which each drank, daily. So, by unavoidable degrees, both were led unconsciously into a land from which few can emerge still solitary. Yet that was what the gods eventually decreed for this hapless twain.

The semi-religious festival of Christmas passed; and New Year's, the real holiday of Europe, had arrived. Ivan, who had spent a week and sums incredible, over gifts for the small Sophia and Katrisha, determined also, at the last moment, on his present for Nathalie, and then passed New Year's eve alone in his own palace, in sleepless cogitation.

Long before this time he realized that all the passion of his youth had been renewed and increased a hundredfold: that he loved the Princess FÉodoreff as he had never loved Nathalie Dravikine. He was ready, nay, mad, to lay himself at her feet. He dreamed, by day and by night, of the only feasible release for her: civil divorce; to be followed, as speedily as might be, by a marriage of the same type with him. Alexis FÉodoreff, he was convinced, would readily consent to this release; and would offer no opposition to her plea. So far, all was easy enough. But Nathalie: what of her? Had she considered the subject? How devoutly orthodox was she? Had she divined his heart? Was her kindness directed towards this possible end? Finally, dared he speak, on the morrow, when so excellent an opening would be made by his gift to her: a diamond heart containing one priceless ruby in its centre?—Should he, by daring, win to heaven? or should he be considered a libertine, and so thrust back to the dull purgatory whence he had so lately risen to her? Better risk nothing than lose all!—Whereby it may be seen that Ivan's blood had cooled a little in the past fifteen years.

Throughout the night he fluctuated; and morning found him still in haggard doubt, hardly lessened when, at a most informal hour, he presented himself at the house in the Gagarinesky, where, from the concierge, he gained the first hint of trouble. The old woman informed him that, in the night, a message had arrived for madame up-stairs. Madame's maid had finally taken it in; and Yekaterina learned, at the delivery of the morning milk, that the news had been very serious; and that madame must shortly leave Moscow.—Whereupon the beginning of lamentations and curiosities—and Ivan out of earshot, flying up the two flights of stairs which led to the lady of his desire.

Ivan Veliki had sounded the first stroke of the tenth hour when Prince Gregoriev knocked upon his cousin's door; and the tenth vibration had not yet died upon the air when he paused in the doorway of the drawing-room.

Nathalie sat in the jut of the room, her back to the row of windows. The heavy coronal of dark braids was piled above her white face with all its usual, exquisite care. The transparent delicacy of her complexion was accentuated by her gown, which was of black, unrelieved save by a little line of white at the throat. In her lap lay two or three envelopes, an open telegram, and some legal-looking, red-sealed papers.

Ivan gazed at the picture she made without speaking: his heart trembling in his throat. In a moment or two, however, she lifted her eyes to his, and, without rising, motioned him to come closer. He went, at once, lifted her cold hand and kissed it, his holiday greetings long since forgotten. After a moment's gaze into her set face, he said, gently:

"You are in trouble, Nathalie mia?"

"Yes, Ivan.—No, Ivan!—I do not know. I cannot think at all, yet.—Alexei Alexandrovitch is dead," she replied, rapidly, and without expression.

At the last words, Ivan felt himself struck as by an inward blow. He started, violently, and echoed: "Dead!—Alexis dead!—Then, Nathalie, you—"

"I am widowed."

"You are free!"

Their words were uttered almost simultaneously. Then followed a silence, pregnant, surcharged; on Ivan's part almost unpermissible. The Princess FÉodoreff lifted one hand to her brow and let it fall again. Ivan turned and began rapidly to pace the room. The thing was so utterly unexpected, so entirely the one event that he had felt could never come about, that he was as one dumb. The woman, watching him, dulled though her mind was by the shock, divined, instinctively, something of his state of thought. Woman though she was, however, she was unprepared for his first action, which, as it were, threw a search-light upon the sole idea into which the confusion eventually resolved itself.

Ceasing his walk he went swiftly to her, took her two hands, drew them protectively to his breast, and said, huskily: "You are in great trouble, Nathalie.—You are unhappy.—Is it—tell me!—is it grief for him?"

Before the clearness of his look, her own went down. A faint color crept into her cheeks. For one moment she hesitated; but finally rose to his own height of honesty.

"No, Ivan, I cannot grieve for the man who deliberately wrecked my youth, debased my thoughts, lowered me for years in my own eyes.—Do you expect it?—It seems to me that, just now, I am feeling nothing. But I know already that I am going to suffer.—I shall suffer remorse! I, who have been so proud of my long forbearance, shall suffer for these last weeks as if I had left him years ago, without provocation!—He is dead; and I was not with him at the end.—He died in his bed.—They tell me it was his heart. He had had trouble with it before, and they had warned him against dissipation; for he was an old man.—But he heeded no one.—And he asked for me, at the end, and I was not there!—That is what I shall suffer for. After all those long years of enduring, I left him to die alone.—Alone: my husband!"

"Nathalie!"

The Princess started at the note of agony in Ivan's voice.

"Nathalie! You are not to suffer for that brute:—that brute who drove you here—drove you to me!" Still retaining the two hands, which she had not tried to make him relinquish, he suddenly sank upon one knee before her, so bringing his head nearly on a level with her own. Then, oblivious of all things else, he began to pour out his heart to her: "Nathalie, that first time, years ago, that you came to Moscow—the time of my mother's death, I forgot my heart-break over her, in you. Even then I loved you, utterly. You were the angel of all my wretched cadet days. Then, years later, when I came to know you a little, my love became the passion of a young man, and it finally swept me into a gulf of desolation. But no wrong could really come through you; and what then seemed ruin, showed itself, in the end, the opportunity of my life. It drove me to what I could not have done alone. Through you I found my work.

"That is long ago, Nathalie; and I am not a young man now. But in all my life there has been only one woman.—That fact came to me forcibly in that first hour of your first visit to me here: the beginning of our thrice-blessed companionship.

"That beautiful dream is ended, now. No doubt, for a time, you must leave this place. But it is insulting neither you nor the dishonored dead whose wife you have not been for years, to tell you what you know: that you carry away with you my soul!—Nathalie, Princess of all my life, will you not set forth leaving behind you the promise to come back?—You shall wait as long as you will: two years, if it must be. I have endured far longer than that, and without hope.—Only let there be between us the dear knowledge that, in time, you are to accept for a husband the man whose life shall thenceforward be at your least command!"

His speech had been too rapid for interruption; and yet both voice and manner were quiet and restrained. His every word was spoken with the simplicity of unconscious ardor. And only from his eyes, which burned her, and the almost painful clasping of her hands, could the Princess surmise his emotion.

Perhaps, had it been feasible, she would have stopped his speech. But, somehow, he had compelled a hearing. And nothing he had said either shocked or repelled her. Yet she was enough affected by the death of the man who had done her every despite, but who had, nevertheless, taught her the mystery of life and given her her children, to be distressed at this proposal in the first hours of her widowhood.

Gently she put Ivan from her, and rose, moving towards the window, before which she stood, gazing down into the white street, while Ivan waited, trembling with emotion. When she turned to him again, she had replaced the chains upon her feelings.

"This afternoon I am leaving for Petersburg," she said. "I must carry your words away with me.—My impulse is to reject, instantly, every suggestion of such a thing.—But your companionship in these last weeks has meant for me more than I can tell you now; and, in my empty home in Petersburg, I shall carefully consider the honor you have done me.—Yes, dear Ivan, it is an honor from any man; and from you a very great one. The woman whom you married would be fortunate, I know. But—I can only promise to write you, soon. Believe me, you shall not wait longer than I can help. This is fair, I think.

"And now, I can give you no more time to-day.—No, you can do nothing, thank you. LÉonie for me, old Kasha for the children—they do everything.—We leave the Petersburg station at five. Come then, if you will, to say good-bye to the little girls. Our au revoir must be here."

"Au revoir!" echoed Ivan, his voice gleaming.

Madame FÉodoreff smiled, rather sadly. "Ah, Ivan, whatever my answer to you, tell me that I shall have your friendship still! It is the most precious thing that is left me, excepting my children. I cannot afford to lose you as my friend.—Promise!" and she held out her hand.

He took it, quietly. "I promise, dear lady of my life."

"Then, again—au revoir!"

"But soon.—Soon!"

He was gone; but, though she yielded to her impulse and ran to the window to look after him, he walked away without once turning his head.

That night, when he returned alone to his empty house, after bidding his world good-bye at the Petersburg station, he perceived at once that the Moscow around him was but a wilderness, and his great palace a prison. Thenceforward he was to exist only in the consciousness of waiting: his faith in her promise that she would torture him not a moment longer than she must. But, as the days passed, logic, calm, even reason, forsook him, till no lover of twenty-one was ever in sorer plight than he. Truly Nathalie herself could hardly have guessed the depths to which she had plunged this quiet and self-centred man. She had, nevertheless, the consideration to keep her word. It was but eleven days after her departure, nine after the funeral of her husband, before Ivan found himself shut alone into that room where she had first greeted him, holding her answer in his visibly trembling hands.—A moment.—A long sigh.—It was open.

"78 Kerzonskaia, St. Petersburg,
"Tuesday, January 9th, 11 P.M.

"Dear Cousin:—Since our last talk together in far-away Moscow, the consciousness of you and of your question have been always with me. To-night I have been sitting here, alone in my boudoir, for two hours, trying, desperately, to think. I have wished to give myself fair opportunity for finding out my real mind; but, miserable thing that I am! the real I will not respond.

"Ivan, my husband has been buried a week and a day! True, for years my tie to him was bondage. I have, to-night, a far tenderer feeling for you than I can remember ever having felt for him. Yet, in spite of this, I cannot bid you hope. I am widowed; and the first numbness of the unexpected shock has not left me yet. I can say to you truly, cousin, that I love you: that the comradeship we have known is something which I shall try to continue while we both live: though we are far beyond our twenties now, Ivan. But more than this, more than pure friendship, seems to me impossible. Marriage—even though it be with the love of my girlhood—is still half-terrible to me. I think that certain memories of my existence with Alexis can never be wiped away.

"Am I cruel, dear Ivan? Oh, I so want not to be! But, indeed, I think I am not yet wholly myself. So I bid you remember that I have suffered very cruelly from the 'love' of a man; and I pray you, for that reason, to try to forgive me when I tell you that friendship is all I can ever want now: that as a friend I shall write you; and as a friend you must know,

"Your affectionate, sorrowful,
"Nathalie D. F."