e-films from the branches, and the melancholy peasant-chants come
nearer to the major key than at any other season. Now, also, was the
time when young blood rushes like sap through the veins, and artists'
dreams turn, irresistibly, to the greatest of their subjects. On such a
day it was that Joseph Kashkarin and Irina Petrovna came for the first
time face to face.

Irina's reappearance in the city of her brother's fall, was made a year
or more after the battle in the Akheskaia. The history of the
twelvemonth of her hiding, lay buried in that oblivion that must shroud
frequent periods of lives like hers. It seemed destined that she should
flash, at intervals, across certain horizons, and never without bringing
to bear some momentary, powerful influence upon the life she illumined.
She was not, like some of her class, led by principles more or less
consistent and dependable: sordid greed for money; complete
selfishness; experienced heartlessness. To her own detriment, Bohemia
and penury could attract her as surely and as frequently as heavily
paid-for luxury. Contrast, indeed, constituted the one law of her
lawlessness. Without this, how had it been possible for that first
contact with the young painter to have filled her, instantaneously, with
the variable flame that had so often been her undoing?

Mademoiselle Petrovna, a young person fairly notorious, by this time,
among the half-world of three or four Russian cities, was now living in
Moscow, perfectly protected by the patronage of the universally
connected, much-besought, Prince G----: a venerable personage of some
seventy winters, whose decorous mansion in the old Equerries' Quarter
was considerably better known than his _bijou maisonnette_ in the
Fourmenny district, at present occupied by the young lady of whom he
ardently desired to possess a discreet portrait: one which, as an "ideal
figure" might safely decorate drawing-room or library in his ostensible
home. But in this affair, as in all other really desirable matters,
Prince G----easily perceived the difficulty of complete discretion.
Alas! To no famous brush dared he intrust his rather obvious commission.
And his search for a competent, yet unknown, artist, led him at last to
the studio of Monsieur Kashkarin, who had been recommended by the voice
of Fate speaking through the decorous tongue of the Academy director.

Irina appeared upon the threshold of Joseph's modest studio clad from
top to toe in a billow