"Come in, come in!" he cried eagerly, taking me by the arm and leading
me to the door.
A waiter threw it wide open. I had a dazzling vision of a table
resplendent with crystal, silver, and flowers, and the bare jeweled
shoulders of women.
"Tarnowsky!" called the Grand Duke from the threshold. "Fortunate among
men! Behold--the most glorious of your conquests!"
Vassili had started to his feet and was looking at me with amazed and
incredulous eyes. There was a deep silence. I felt as if I should die.
Vassili came up to me. He took me brusquely by the hand, crushing my
fingers in his iron clasp. "You are mad!" he said. Then he looked at me
from head to foot--not with the gaze of a husband, nor yet with that of a
lover, but with the cold curious scrutiny of the perfect connoisseur.
"Come," he said at last, drawing me towards the others who were in a
riot of laughter. "I have always told my friends that you were a
chilling, lily-white flake of snow. You are not!" And he laughed. "You
are a blazing little firebrand! Come in!"
Thenceforward my husband would always have me with him. My untutored
adolescence was trailed from revelry to revelry, from banquet to orgy;
my innocence swept into the maelstrom of a licentious life. I was forced
to look into the depths of every depravity; to my lips was proffered
every chalice of shame.
Oh, if as I stood trembling on the confines of maidenhood, some strong
and tender hand had drawn me into safety, should not I have been like
other women, those happy women who walk with lofty brows in the
sunshine, august and ruthless in their purity?
But, alas! when with tardy and reluctant step I issued forth from my
long childhood, a thousand cruel hands were thrust out to push me
towards the abyss.
Oh, white pathway of innocence which knows no return! Oh, tenuous light
of purity which, once quenched, kindles no more! Did I not grieve and
mourn for you when I lost you before my twentieth year? Sadly,
enviously, like some poor exile, I saw other girls of my age passing in
blithe security by the side of their mothers, blushing at an eager word
or at a daring glance. Alas! I felt that I was unworthy to kiss the hem
of their skirts.
But bliss was to be vouchsafed to me. Redeeming and triumphant there
came to me at last the Angel of Maternity. With proud humility I bore
the little human flower fluttering in my breast. At every throb of life
I felt myself swooning with joy--with the ineffable joy of my reconquered
purity.
My mother was with me, and in the tender haven of her arms I found
shelter for my meek and boundless ecstasy.
How is it possible, I asked myself, that there are women who dread this
perfect happiness, who weep and suffer through these months fraught with
rapturous two-fold life?
For me, I felt like a flowering plant in springtime, impelled by some
potent influence towards its perfect blossoming. The whole of that
blissful period seemed a sublime ascent to unalloyed felicity;
everything enchanted me, from the awed and tremulous waiting to the
final crowning consummation.
When at last the fragile infant--my son!--lay in my arms, he seemed to me
sufficient to fill my entire life. I nursed him into ever-growing wonder
and beauty. Day by day he seemed fairer, more entrancing, like a
delicate flower in some fantastic lunar legend.
Oh, the wee groping hands against my face! The wilful little caprices,
the cries like those of an angry dove! And the dimples on the elbows;
the droll battle with the little cap always awry, and the joyous
impatience of the tiny kicking feet!
Each day my mother and I invented new names for him--names of little
flowers, names of little animals, nonsense-names made up of sweet
senseless sounds.
I had no thought, I had no desire. Pale and pure I sat enthroned in the
milk-white paradise of maternity.