ndard, had told the secret of that interview to no one,
not even de Windt, who, however, brooded over his silence as an
injustice. Indeed, if the truth were known, Gregoriev was strangely
regretful of his behavior towards his chief. True, he had had no choice;
and he had saved a woman from infamy. But his shame at the deeds of his
father had marred his life for so many years, that the consciousness of
having adopted his father's method, though in an unselfish cause,
depressed him unaccountably. And, even had he known, at the time, how
bitterly he was afterwards to rue his silence, it is probable that he
would have acted again in precisely the same fashion.

From this time forth, however, his standing in the regiment rivalled
that of its former commander, now General of their brigade. Not a man
nor an officer there but gave him the whole credit for that change for
the better which had begun in the Colonel on the day after his first,
plucky interview, and which grew, steadily, throughout the summer, till,
at a last dress-parade, held in the presence of the Czar, the Second
actually captured the Iron Medal for drill--which gave them the third
place in their army division. Brodsky, when he had nothing else on hand
to occupy him, was a good officer, and strict to a point of tyranny with
regard to dress and the appearance of his regiment. By the time of the
grand reviews he should, had he had the least particle of generosity in
his nature, have forgiven Ivan's victory in his satisfaction over his
renewed standing in the army and at his clubs.

Meantime, the remaining weeks of camp life proved to be monotonously
dreary. Ivan was not of the type of man to press his popularity and
batten upon it. Rather, flattery, and the inevitable toadyism of weaker
natures, revolted him; and he began once more to retire into himself,
and to live again with dreams, which now formed themselves round any one
of three topics: first and highest, his music, at which he had begun
again to work; secondly, the sweetest of the three, Nathalie, of whom he
thought as of some rare and lovely flower, not to be plucked by human
hands; lastly, at first rarely, later far more often, round that girl
whom he had come to regard in a measure as his protegee--Irina, whom he
saw twice during the summer, and whose father, though he had paid two
small instalments on his debt, had begun, (to Irina's secret delight,
and Ivan's persistent blindness), to regard the hands