Uttering these words, Tatyana hurriedly withdrew into an inner room.

He was free now, free to go to Irina!  That day Tatyana and her aunt left Baden.  There were no barriers between him and his soul’s desire.  He hastened to Irina’s side.  He found her turning over some lace in a cardboard box.

“Don’t be angry with me, dear one,” she said, “for attending to this trash at the present moment.  I am obliged to go to a ball at a certain lady’s.  These bits of finery have been sent me, and I must choose to-day.  Ah!  I am awfully wretched,” she cried suddenly, and she laid her face down on the edge of the box.  Tears began falling from her eyes... she turned away; the tears might spoil the lace.

He was uneasy at her tears and tried to comfort her, and she, putting her arms around him, cried to him that she would do whatever he wished.  They should be free people.  “Let us be free,” she said.  “The day is ours.  A lifetime is ours.”

Litvinov spent the next twenty-four hours in making all arrangements for their flight together.  He raised as much money as he could, even stooping to try his luck at roulette to increase his hoard.  The appointed moment of their departure approached.  As he waited impatiently in the hotel hall, a letter was brought him.  It was a letter from Irina in French.

“My dear one,” she wrote, “I cannot run away with you.  I have not the strength to do it.  I cannot leave this life; I see the poison has gone too deeply into me.  Oh, my dear one, think me a weak, worthless woman, despise, but don’t abandon me, don’t abandon your Irina....  To leave this life I have not the courage, but live it without you I cannot either.  Come soon to me.  I shall not have an instant’s peace until I see you.  Yours, yours, yours—­I.”

The blood beat like a sledgehammer in Litvinov’s head, then slowly and painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone.  And so again, again deceit; no, worse than deceit—­lying and baseness... and life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to, the last prop, in fragments too.  In Litvinov’s soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary impulses of fury.

He determined to leave Baden at once.  Getting a carriage, he took his box to the station.  He was just taking his seat in the railway carriage.

“Grigory Mihalovitch...  Grigory...” he heard a supplicating whisper behind him.

He started to see Irina standing on the platform, her eyes crying to him to come back—­to come back....  He jumped into the carriage, and turning round, he motioned her to a place beside him.  She understood him.  There was still time.  One step, one movement, and two lives made one for ever would have been hurried away into the uncertain distance....  While she wavered, a loud whistle sounded, and the train moved off.

IV.—­Love’s Reward