was trying not to think of her) but to reach a room in the Heidelberg hotel, that was what stood immovably before him, a guiding light. What would be later, he did not know, nor did he want to know . . . One thing was beyond doubt, he would not come back. 'If I die first!' he repeated for the tenth time, and he glanced at his watch.
A quarter-past six! How long still to wait! He paced once more up and down. The sun was nearly setting, the sky was crimson above the trees, and the pink flush of twilight lay on the narrow windows of his darkening room. Suddenly Litvinov fancied the door had been opened quickly and softly behind him and as quickly closed again . . . He turned round; at the door, muffled in a dark cloak, was standing a woman . . .
'Irina,' he cried, and clapped his hands together in amazement . . . She raised her head and fell upon his breast.
Two hours later he was sitting in his room on the sofa. His box stood in the corner, open and empty, and on the table in the midst of things flung about in disorder, lay a letter from Tatyana, just received by him. She wrote to him that she had decided to hasten her departure from Dresden, since her aunt's health was completely restored, and that if nothing happened
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