I am in love! Madly, sublimely, tragically in love! This
morning I went to the parade-ground as in a dream; I found
myself speaking to the colonel in a gentle winning voice that
was perfectly ludicrous. When I drilled my company I could
hear myself giving the words of command in an imploring tone
which I still blush to remember. I am obsessed, hallucinated;
there floats before my eyes a slender, ethereal creature, with
red lips that never smile, and hair that looks like a cataract
of champagne.
Stahl introduced me to her yesterday, here at his house.
"Come," he said, taking me by the arm. "You are going to make
the acquaintance of a superior being, soft of voice and sad of
countenance, who bears the gentle name of Marie."
"Let me off," I replied skeptically. "Sad and superior beings
are not to my liking."
"You will like this one," said Stahl.
"I know I shan't," I replied curtly. I saw Stahl's eye warn
me, and, turning, found myself face to face with the subject
of our conversation, a tall, flower-like vision, with
translucent eyes and a mystic inscrutable face.
I knew she had overheard me, and as I bowed low before her,
she said: "That you should like me is of no importance. What
really matters is that I should be pleased with you."
Her beauty and the scornful levity of her words struck me
strangely. "Madame," and I was surprised to feel that I spoke
with sincerity, "to please you will be henceforward the
highest aim of my desire."
She looked at me a moment; then she spoke quietly: "You have
attained your aim."
She turned and left me. I stood thunderstruck by the brief and
daring reply and by the flash of that clear gaze. She had
spoken the words without a smile.
She did not address me during the rest of the evening. When
she left, she barely glanced at me and vouchsafed neither
smile nor greeting.
Just for an instant she raised her black-fringed eyes and
gazed at me; then her lashes fell; and it was as if a light
had been blown out.
I am in love with her! Madly, divinely, desperately in love.
Ah, Stepan, love--what an ecstasy and what a disaster!
Your BOZEVSKY.
It was Dr. Stahl, the "Satanic Stahl," who got these letters from his
cousin Stepan Nebrasoff, and showed them to me. They bewildered and
troubled me. What? Was I really so attractive and so perturbing in the
eyes of the gallant young Pole--the handsomest officer in the Imperial
Guard? I repeated to myself his disquieting epithets: "flower-like,"
"ethereal," "inscrutable"; and in my room at night when I loosened my
hair, I wondered: "Does it really look like a cataract of champagne?"
When I went out I never smiled, even when I felt inclined to do so,
since my gravity had seemed so charming to him.
Night and day he followed me like a shadow--or rather, should I say, like
a blaze of light. In whatever direction I turned I was sure to encounter
his radiant smile and his flashing glance. His passion encompassed me; I
felt like Brunnhilde surrounded by a sea of flame. I was elated yet
terrified.
One evening at dinner I made up my mind to speak to Vassili about it.
"Vassili," I said falteringly, "I think we ought to go away for a time."
"Away? Where to?" asked my husband.
"Anywhere--anywhere away from Kieff."
"Why?"
I felt myself turning pale! "I am afraid," I stammered, "I am
afraid--that Bozevsky--"
"Well?" asked Vassili serenely, pouring some vodka into his champagne
and drinking it.
"I am afraid that Bozevsky is falling in love with me."
"And who would not fall in love with you, dushka?" laughed Vassili. "As
for Bozevsky, may the wolves eat him."
And dinner being over, he lit his cigar and went out.
* * * * *
I go sadly upstairs to the nursery where Tioka and Tania, like blonde
seraphs, lie asleep.
A dim lamp hangs between the two white cots and illumines their favorite
picture--an artless painting of the Virgin Mary, holding in her youthful
arms the infant Jesus with a count's coronet on His head.