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Thus had she vanished. . . !But whither. . . ?And living now?–To what end. . . ?It was impossible, it was absurd!

And the Count plunged into the darkness of unknown thoughts.

He thought of all the past existence. —Six months had gone by since this marriage. Was it not abroad, at an embassy ball, that he had set eyes upon her for the first time?Yes. That moment rose up again before his eyes, in all its distinctness. She appeared to him there, radiant. That night their glances had met, and inwardly they had recognized their affinity, their obligation to a lasting love.

Deceitful talk, observant smiles, insinuations, all the difficulties thrust up by the world to delay the inevitable happiness of those who belong to each other—everything had vanished before the calm certitude which, at that very moment, they had exchanged. Weary of the insipid pomposities of her circle, Vera had come to meet him with the first hindrance that showed itself, and so straightened out in queenly fashion those dreary preliminaries which squander the precious days of life.

But ah! at their first words the empty comments of outsiders seemed no more than a flight of night-birds passing back into their darkness. What smiles they exchanged!What ineffable embraces were theirs!

And yet their nature was strange, strange in the extreme! They were two beings gifted with marvelous senses, but exclusively terrestrial. Sensations were prolonged within them with disturbing intensity, and in experiencing them they lost consciousness of themselves. On the other hand, certain ideas, those of the soul for instance, of the infinite, of God Himself, were as if veiled from their understanding. The faith of great numbers of living persons in supernatural things was for them only a matter for vague astonishment; a sealed book wherewith they had no concern, being qualified neither to justify nor to condemn. And so, recognizing fully that the world was something foreign to themselves, they had isolated themselves immediately upon their union in this ancient sombre mansion, where the noises of the outside world were deadened by the dense foliage of the gardens.

There the two lovers plunged into the ocean of those enjoyments, languorous and perverse, in which the spirit is merged with the mysteries of the flesh. They exhausted the violence of desires, the tremors, the distraught longings of their tenderness. They became each the very heart-beat of the other. In them the spirit flowed so completely into the body that their forms seemed to them to be instruments of comprehension, and that the blazing links of their kisses chained them together in a fusion of the ideal. A long-drawn rapture!And suddenly—the spell was broken!The terrible accident sundered them. Their arms had been entwined. What shadow had seized from his arms his dead beloved?Dead? No: is the soul of the violoncello snatched away in the cry of its breaking string?

The hours passed.

Through the casement he watched the night advancing in the heavens: and Night became personal to him—seeming like a queen walking into exile, with melancholy on her brow, while Venus, the diamond clasp of her mourning gown, gleamed there above the trees, alone, lost in the depths of azure.

“It is Vera,” he thought.

At the name, spoken under his breath, he shivered like a man awakening, and then, straightening himself, looked round him.

The objects in the room were now lighted by a glow which till then had been indefinite, that of a sanctuary-lamp, turning the darkness into deep blue; and now the night which had climbed the firmament made it seem like another star in here. It was the incense-perfumed lamp of an ikon, a family reliquary belonging to Vera. The triptych of precious antique wood was hung by its platted Russian esparto between the mirror and the picture. A reflection from the gold of its interior fell quivering on to the necklace, among the jewels on the mantel.