hich presently swung back as Joseph
appeared on the threshold and paused, blinking at the light.

It was at this moment that Ivan caught his most memorable glimpse of the
young man, white-faced, unshorn, ill-clothed, his eyes bloodshot, his
whole person shambling and loose-jointed: his long fingers working,
tremulously. After a moment's anxious gaze he said, in a muffled voice:

"Irina!--Here, Irina!--I forgot about supper! I forgot I promised, this
time. But you should have seen! Eleven times during the hour, seven came
up!--I was playing your number.--How could any one have dreamed--Irina!"

"She is not here," said Ivan, quietly, as he rose.

"What!--Th--Thou!" Joseph straightened, but his jaw fell.

Ivan made no reply. Presently the other shut the door and came forward,
peering, eagerly. "Thou!" he muttered again, as if to himself. And then:
"Ivan!--I saw him!"--Finally, aloud: "But Irina!--I want Irina, you
know."

For answer, Ivan took the broken man by the arm and put him into a
chair. Then he said, very gently: "When did you eat last, Joseph?"

"Eat!" The upturned face, with its varnished eyes, gleamed ghostlike in
the yellow light. "This morning I--"

"You've been at the 'Masque' all day?"

"Oh, you see, I--you know she needs a great deal.--Sometimes I--I have
hardly enough.--Perhaps, now, Ivan Mikhailovitch, you--would lend--"

"You must have some food, at once," broke in Ivan, harshly.

To his surprise, Joseph suddenly sprang to his feet, crying, angrily:
"See here, what the devil are you doing here?--And where is Irina?--I
want her! She knows me.--Where has she gone?"

"I don't know."

"Don't--Rot! She's at a restaurant. I'm late.--Well, I'll wait." He
stumbled backward into the chair, again; but Ivan stood close before
him, his face now as white as Joseph's own.

"Irina is not at a restaurant. She left these rooms early this
afternoon, and took her things with her." And, as he spoke, Ivan
stiffened his every muscle, and instinctively clinched his hands.

For the moment, Joseph stared, stupidly. Then, all at once, he was up
and at Ivan, lurching forward upon him, clutching, impotently, at his
throat, breathing gutturally, while he uttered inarticulate syllables in
the tongue of a serf.

Ivan, even in his disgust at this revelation of the man's lowest self,
his unquestionable bad blood, held him off, easily. In a moment or two,
indeed, he had the half-drunken, wholly exhausted creature back i