e. Nevertheless, the wretchedness hidden
under his set, strained mask, was divined by his aunt. Thus, she, for
the time much softened by her grief, and feeling also a good deal of
curiosity concerning the inner nature of this youth of the haunted eyes,
presently sought, by every art of tact and seeming understanding, to
open his heart to tears. The fact that she at length succeeded, must be
put down to her lasting credit; it having been a deed directly opposed
to the traits of her rather cold nature.

Upon the evening after the funeral Madame Dravikine, intensely wearied
by the long walk to and from the cemetery, was lying on her couch, eyes
closed, her head aching slightly. Nevertheless, when there came a timid
knock upon her door, she answered with a summons to enter, and Ivan,
responding, went to her impetuously, yielded his hands to her clasp, and
allowed himself to be drawn to his knees, at her side, there to listen
to gentle words about his mother's love for him, and her ambitions for
his future, till she had pierced through the armor of his reserve, and
he burst into a storm of sobs the violence of which at first frightened
her.

It was the one possible means of relief, however; and Madame Dravikine,
wise in her generation, let him weep his bitter revolt away. This lasted
nearly an hour, and both were exhausted by the time the tears had
ceased, and only an occasional, spasmodic sob gave evidence of the storm
that had passed. It was at this juncture--Ivan upon the floor, half
sitting, half kneeling, Caroline's arms clasping him close--that the
door of the room opened again, quietly, and Nathalie appeared. At sight
of the two she halted, uncertainly. But her mother, gently releasing the
embarrassed boy, bade her come in; nor when, an instant later, he made
the move, would she permit Ivan to go. It was, perhaps, unfair to her
that this kindly act of hers should have borne, for all three of them,
consequences so momentous, and, to the Countess, so unwelcome. Yet it
was certainly this evening which saw the beginning of the single real
passion of Ivan's life. Thereafter, in that little gallery of mental
portraits carried by each of us in his intimate heart, the beloved form
of his dead mother was given a companion picture: that of a girl's face,
warm and living, upon which he often gazed with an ardor, a devotion, a
longing, rather unboyishly sincere.

Certainly the picture thus enshrined was one not unworthy of stro