He came to her until his hands were almost on her body; he hung his head, standing over her.

She stood back as though she were going to strike him, then suddenly with a laugh she sprang upon the chair beside her, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him; then, still standing on the chair, turned and faced us all.

“Now, that’s enough—­all of you.  Michael, Uncle Ivan, Uncle Alexei, Durdles—­how dare you, all of you?  You’re all as bad—­every one of you.  I’ll punish all of you if we have any more politics.  Beastly politics!  What do they matter?  It’s my birthday.  My birthday, I tell you.  It shan’t be spoilt.”

She seemed to me so excited as not to know what she was saying.  What had she seen?  What did she know?...  Meanwhile Grogoff was elated, wildly pleased like a boy who, contrary to all his expectations, had won a prize.

He went up to Markovitch with his hand out: 

“Nicholas—­forgive me—­Prasteete—­I forgot myself.  I’m ashamed—­my abominable temper.  We are friends.  You were right, too.  We talk here in Russia too much, far too much, and when the moment comes for action we shrink back.  We see too far perhaps.  Who knows?  But you were right and I am a fool.  You’ve taught me a lesson by your nobility.  Thank you, Nicholas.  And all of you—­I apologise to all of you.”

We moved away from the table.  Vera came over to us, and then sat on the sofa with her arm around Nina’s neck.  Nina was very quiet now, sitting there, her cheeks flushed, smiling, but as though she were thinking of something quite different.

Some one proposed that we should play “Petits Cheveaux.”  We gathered around the table, and soon every one was laughing and gambling.

Only once I looked up and saw that Markovitch was gazing at Vera; and once again I looked at Vera and saw that she was staring before her, seeing nothing, lost in some vision—­but it was not of Markovitch that she was thinking....

I was the first to leave—­I said good-night to every one.  I could hear their laughter as I waited at the bottom of the stairs for the Dvornik to let me out.

But when I was in the street the world was breathlessly still.  I walked up the Prospect—­no soul was in sight, only the scattered lamps, the pale snow, and the houses.  At the end of the Canal I stopped.  The silence was intense.

It seemed to me then that in the very centre of the Canal the ice suddenly cracked, slowly pulled apart, leaving a still pool of black water.  The water slowly stirred, rippled, then a long, horned, and scaly head pushed up.  I could see the shining scales on its thick side and the ribbed horn on the back of the neck.  Beneath it the water stirred and heaved.  With dead glazed eyes it stared upon the world, then slowly, as though it were drawn from below, it sank.  The water rippled in narrowing circles—­then all was still....

The moon came out from behind filmy shadow.  The world was intensely light, and I saw that the ice of the canal had never been broken, and that no pool of black water caught the moon’s rays.