posed to do was so common
as scarce to cause notice in the gay watering-place, always a rendezvous
for the high half-world. But Ivan was, even now, by no means of this
kind: the military members of the Yacht club, to whom such escapades
were afterwards proudly exploited among their friends. All night long,
as he sat upright in his place in the reserved carriage, sleepless,
watching the young woman who was reclining opposite him trustfully
unconscious, Ivan was aware of his mother's reproachful presence: and
heard again the voice that had rung so dreadfully in his boyish ears:
"Remember, Ivan, what I have suffered, through a man! Will you
remember?--Will you break the Gregoriev tradition towards women?"

Once again Sophia, gentle woman, did her work. Irina Petrovna opened her
eyes, next day, upon a different man.

Whether the girl were astonished, or pleased, or disappointed, by the
strangeness of her situation during the fortnight in Baden, Ivan could
not tell. He was perfectly well aware that it would be of no use to
explain their true position to any one he knew. Mockery at his faith in
their credulity at so preposterous a statement, would have been his only
reward. But it was none the less true that, so long as Irina remained
with him, she was treated with the punctilious courtesy that he should
have used towards her had she been what they pretended her to be: his
sister. He had taken three rooms--two bedrooms and a little _salon_--at
the hotel. And the very waiters winked, solemnly, outside the _salon_
door, as they served early coffee and, later, an elaborate _dejeuner_,
to the two within. But Ivan could meet any eye calmly. And if Irina
marvelled, she said nothing. Only, from this time forth, Ivan occupied,
in her secret soul, a niche of his own, far above that of any other man.
In later years, many candles burned before her shrine; and it served to
keep within her heart one spot inviolate. The thoughts, the prayers,
expended here without sense of conscious virtue, perhaps served her
unexpectedly in the end, when before her, hopeless one, a golden gate
swung slowly open, and she entered that land where the wretched deeds of
her later life could blacken her thoughts no more.--At the time,
certainly, she might have been impatient at the formality of her
companion's manner, his unfailing deference to her faintest wish. And
yet she was conscious that the days spent in this gay resort were happy:
happier than any she