Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume V).djvu/204

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SMOKE

and again clutched his head in both hands. 'All is at an end!' he whispered at last, 'Irina! Irina!'

Only now, only at that instant, he realised that he was irrevocably, senselessly, in love with her, that he had loved her since the very day of that first meeting with her at the Old Castle, that he had never ceased to love her. And yet how astounded, how incredulous, how scornful, he would have been, had he been told so a few hours back!

'But Tanya, Tanya, my God! Tanya! Tanya!' he repeated in contrition ; while Irina's shape fairly rose before his eyes in her black almost funereal garb, with the radiant calm of victory on her marble white face.

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