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The night of the goose and champagne⁠—the night of Seryozha’s arrival at the Ostapenkos’ house⁠—seemed the longest night in the whole realm of time⁠—a sort of Methuselah of a night. The days of a man’s life, thought Seryozha, are of different ranks⁠—counts, princes, fat bourgeois days, rough peasant days⁠—but this was a grand, duke of a day, a giant of rank, quite outside the standard of ordinary days. Each royal minute was like an hour, each hour like a crowned year. All the other days of his life should bow before this⁠—the day that promoted him to be a king, to be married, to drink champagne.

Wilfred’s great day, which, for some little time, may be said to have been in eclipse, rose again when the goose was served. Wilfred, on being tactfully roused by Seryozha and led away to put his head under the pump, assumed a guiltily bright manner, to prove to the world, and to the absent Reverend Oswald Fawcett (who was Wilfred’s conscience) that he had not drunk any wine to speak of. He did not notice that his legal document had disappeared from in front of him; he hardly remembered having written it, though it remained a settled plan in his mind; his tongue felt a little knotted and uncertain, but that did not matter, since scarcely anyone would have understood anything he said in any case. He enjoyed the goose.

Varvara’s goose took three and a half hours to eat. It was half past eleven when they finally could eat no more, and even then there was no childish suggestion of going to bed. The day was recognized by common consent as a great day, and allowed to occupy its throne indefinitely. It scarcely seemed to the happy and excited Seryozha to move at all. Half past eleven when the goose was finished and, hours later, only twenty-eight minutes to twelve. The time that had elapsed since his proposal to marry Tatiana had been accepted seemed so enormous that he was as well reconciled to it as though his parents had arranged it in his childhood. Age had matured and mellowed it to the status of a reasonable sanctioned thing.

He found Tanya more and more beautiful each minute, and each long minute gave him time to learn something new and delightful about her face. At first it embarrassed him to look at her across the brown hill of goose carcass that stood between them, because she, on her part, never took her eyes off his face. But after a while he found that somehow, though her eyes were on him, their two pairs of eyes never seemed to meet. She seemed to be looking at him in a blind way, as a painted picture looks, and he could watch her without self-consciousness, as one might bravely cross glances with a painted queen. Seryozha had never in his life had such an opportunity to look at a beautiful girl. He had no words to say all the things he noted about her. “Supple,” he thought, anxiously, “clean⁠—even⁠—ivory⁠—bones like carved curves⁠—hollows under cheekbones, carved again⁠—something pulling outer corners of eyes down and lips up⁠—accurate⁠—keen⁠—sun always dazzling eyes.⁠ ⁠…” He saw that her skin was like faintly tinted ivory, but, never having approached real civilization, was not surprised at that pale gloss that would have showed you or me that Tatiana had never come in contact with a powder puff.

As for Tatiana, she had never seen that odd animal, man, presented in such fair colors and with such striking inoffensiveness of detail. I dare say that the fact that Seryozha had never yet needed to shave (though he did shave, sometimes, on Sundays, when his mother was unusually forgetful of his manliness) had, at the beginning, more part in his fascination for her than any other factor. He seemed to her so well sewn up in his nice skin. Men, she had always found, were such a clumsy piece of work compared with animals. They were so flawed, so pitted with pores and discolorations, so smoky, so hot, so shiny bald or sticky-haired⁠—like a child’s stitching on canvas, whereas any animal was like Chinese embroidery on silk. One had only to compare the face of a Korean beggar dog⁠—crawling with ticks, yet honest, finished, and sinless⁠—with that of a Korean beggar man⁠—rotted away with mean and complex depravity⁠ ⁠… one had only to compare the fine eager beam of a thirsty horse bending to drink from a pool, with the leer of a Russian approaching his glass of beer⁠—to see the essential golden rightness in an animal’s face and to admit the spoiled spotted thing that man is. Seryozha seemed to Tatiana as flawless and bland as an animal, and she watched him with real delight and imagination, as she often watched her father’s young horses running from end to end of their field. Life beamed from Seryozha direct⁠—not refracted among distorting human angles. Whatever he did would be right, Tatiana thought, just as whatever an animal does is right. Sometimes dangerous, perhaps, sometimes surprising⁠—but always right. And always lovely, if one looked at it not through the complicated spoiled lens of human eyes. Something about an animal was always mercifully far away⁠—by itself, even if the animal was in one’s arms, demanding attention. Something about man was too close, even if that man was far away, even if he was dead in a far country, dead of his own intrusion. Something about Seryozha would always be far away, thought Tatiana, even if his breath were on one’s cheek⁠—something in him would be part of the sunny, sweet, dumb world, happy and living by itself, like a galloping colt.

Pavel Ostapenko’s voice trumpeted on. Hardly a word he said was true, but every word exalted him or his family. He was like a motor engine which, by running, charges continually its own battery. The more his lips uttered his own praises, the more was his listening heart charged with an exquisite accumulation of vanity, and the more self-flatteries did his lips find to express. Seryozha was by now quite established as a grafted twig upon the towering Ostapenko tree. The divine word Ostapenko now included Seryozha and his parents, and the whole great branching growth brushed the clouds.

Neither Seryozha nor Wilfred drank any more wine. This was partly because Pavel Ostapenko had by now drunk so much that he continually forgot to fill any glass but his own. But it was also because Seryozha was warm with a glow of glittering responsibility; he did not want to lose himself in folly and sickness tonight; he was gloriously happy as he was, and everything looked as happy as a flower. He felt that he had climbed to a pinhead peak of happiness, and that to go any farther would be as stupid a descent as to retreat⁠—and almost as impossible. As for Wilfred Chew, the spirit of the Reverend Oswald Fawcett was reestablished on his disciple’s inward throne. Wilfred felt sure that he had not yet done anything wrong. Surely a good Wesleyan could join in the harmless feastings of his friends⁠—especially if the language bar prevented any other sociable interchange. Champagne up till now had been labeled Good Fellowship. But the happy emergency of Good Fellowship being over, the liquid part of the feasting now became alcohol and even moral danger. Wilfred, really anxious to be good, was made aware of the necessity for this change of labels, by noticing that he was talking, involuntarily, in a rather peculiar way. Every time he finished a sentence he clicked in his throat and resolved prudently to say no more. Then, the next minute, that hard-worked and usually impeccable servant, his tongue, would start unexpectedly on a new piece of strangely twisted and thwarted information.

Varvara Ostapenko sat divided between a resentful conviction that her husband was drunk, and a resentful fear that the strangers might have the impertinence to notice that he was drunk. There were drawbacks in being married to such a rare creature as her husband, she thought, and one of the drawbacks was the commonness of the people who dared to pass their common secret judgments on his rarity. Drunkenness was an Ostapenko oddity that she allowed for in the Procrustes frame of her wifely pride, but every time her husband got drunk he got drunk in a slightly different way, and she had to use her ingenuity to lop off something here about his behavior, and stretch something there, to fit her angular, inelastic standard of Ostapenkoism. She felt the necessity of presenting to strangers the sight of each Ostapenko neatly fitted into this frame⁠—“and criticize anything if you dare!” Pavel’s romantic lies were part of her standard for him; his arrogance, his belching, his forgetfulness of his guests’ needs, his occasional rancorous references to his daughter⁠—were excrescences that needed shaping into conformity, and at every example of these unlicensed eccentricities, Varvara looked furiously at Seryozha and Wilfred to see if they had dared to see or hear.

But Seryozha stared only at Tatiana, and Wilfred was listening only for loopholes in the talk into which he might squeeze some uncomprehended remark of his own. So presently Varvara felt that she could trust her rare drunk Pavel alone with these gentle strangers and go to bed. She took Tatiana’s hand to lead her away.

The mutual stare of Tatiana and Seryozha had, it seemed to them, blown a sort of thin glass globe enclosing them⁠—a glittering loneliness in which a miracle of dumb familiarity had been possible. All round it the humming sound of Pavel’s talk had only served to make their apartness more private. Seryozha was even able to leave enough of his unneeded brain outside this crystal bubble to allow him to answer with a suitable grunt the tone of any of Pavel’s remarks that sounded incomplete without a complementary guestly grunt. But all the time he and Tatiana felt as deeply sunk in themselves and in each other as puppies must feel in one litter in the straw while the bustle of the stable goes on above them. And now, by Varvara’s action in rising and taking Tatiana’s hand, their glass house was shattered, their mindless drowsy warmth of shared life was startled into a tiresome awareness.

The women were gone. The royal day had doffed its crown.

Pavel Ostapenko’s talk now imposed the tiresome necessity of being understood. There was now nothing for Seryozha to bury his attention in, except his host’s voice⁠—nothing to watch except those staring, rufous eyes, that little gold-red beard being pulled and pushed like a latch to open and shut busy jaws, the blouse flapping open to show drops of sweat among the thick auburn hairs on his breast.

Directly Varvara and Tatiana had gone, Pavel, also noticing their absence, responded to it by talking about his wife.

“A wonderful woman⁠—my wife⁠—Varvara Alexeievna,” he said. “I wish I could be sure that our girl would make you as good a wife as her mother has me. Lord! how sorry I feel for some of my friends with their scolding wives⁠—wives who set themselves up to be their equals⁠—wives who gad about in silk stockings⁠—wives who get drunk⁠—wives who can’t even roast a chicken decently. You know, there was quite a romance about my marriage with Varvara Alexeievna.⁠ ⁠… She was a milkman’s daughter, and of course my people wouldn’t hear of such a match for me. We Ostapenkos are intensely proud⁠—but also, mark you, intensely romantic⁠—chivalrous⁠—disinterested. If one of my family gives his word, well, he’ll keep it as though it were a lawyer’s bond. Well, that’s what my father hadn’t reckoned with⁠—he wasn’t allowing for the romantic chivalry I inherited from him and the impulsive, passionate, quixotic line behind him. I won’t conceal from you that my father had reason on his side; I could have made a most excellent marriage with the daughter of one of my father’s oldest friends⁠—a fine plump girl with a big dowry and broad hips and shoulders, who loved me to distraction and would no doubt have borne me half a dozen sons to carry on my name, instead of one puny hen-chick. It would have been a good match, and I won’t say that I was blind to its advantages⁠—but, ‘No,’ I said⁠—‘no, papa, I can’t go back on my word⁠—’ ”

“Translate to our host, Saggay Saggayitch,” Wilfred suddenly said, speaking very carefully, “how much I admire his taste in furning⁠—in fursh⁠—in furnaces⁠—in furnishing what is usually such a comfortless place⁠—a Japanese house. It is almost English, almost ’sgood as the first-class boardinghouse where I stayed in Bloomsbury West Central One, while a law student. Such strong chegs to the lairs, and all so costly as I can see with half an egg⁠—half an eye.”

“ ‘Poor little Varvara Alexeievna loves me, papa,’ I said, ‘and counts on me. I’ve given her my word and I’ll marry her like an honorable man.’ Well, there was a terrible passionate scene⁠—typical of the scenes in our family, for we were no milk-and-water lot, I assure you, when roused. But in the end my father saw I was determined⁠—a twinkle came into his eye and he said, ‘By God! Pavlik, you’re a true Ostapenko, no doubt about that⁠—’ ”

“And tell him, too,” added Wilfred, “that even in England I never saw before a mustard-pot in the shape of a howl⁠—owl⁠—though I once saw this bird in person when going to Ascot in a flus, buttering through the woods one evening. Fluttering⁠—through⁠—a wood⁠—in-a-bus.”

“I married Varya, as you might say, if not exactly out of pity, certainly out of chivalry⁠—poor soul. I knew she was not likely to have any other offers⁠—a poor milkman’s daughter, and so thin, and with that birthmark. But Lord, she was⁠—and still is⁠—devoted to me. She knows her luck.”

Pavel’s face was the face of a man who had never had a setback. His features were set in lines of happy certainty; his mouth looked entirely brave against self-doubt; his tongue did not know how to stumble. Only his eyes, anxious and roundly staring, looked as if they feared attack⁠—as if he had to open them widely in order to collect evidence that all that he said was believed and appreciated. His eyes challenged you to say that he lied or was mistaken in anything, and if you had expressed a doubt, he would have piled evidence on evidence, false witness on false witness, lie upon lie, perjured oath upon oath, completely forgetting the foundation of truth on which such a toppling edifice of affirmation is most safely built. Until at last you had to admit, “Well⁠—yes⁠—if you assure me of that, and that, and that, and swear to it so solemnly, of course I must believe you that this is so,” and only then did his round eyes relax, blink, look safe again. You were convinced; that was all that mattered; he had obliged you to admit that he was right. Whether he was right did not matter⁠—that he had lied from the beginning did not matter⁠—you had said that he was right, you accepted his truth, though it was no truth.

“I must say,” went on Pavel, “except in one matter, I’ve never had to regret my impulsive and chivalrous decision. Varya’s been a wonderful wife to me (I can see it now looking back) except in one particular. The exception I leave you to imagine, my dear boy. You’re young, but you know life, and you know as well as I do there are certain things a decent man doesn’t give away when talking of his wife. Nature⁠—and a man’s nature especially, mind you⁠—shocks her, seems to her improper. She has tried to adapt herself, poor soul; she sees quite well that such freakishness and prudishness make a woman an unworthy mate for a manly man. But fundamentally, it’s still there.⁠ ⁠… It accounts for much of the oddity in our Tanya’s nature. Tanya, our only child, has inherited her mother’s nature, though her coldness has a different aspect.⁠ ⁠… Tanya doesn’t think anything improper⁠—indeed, her mother and I have often had to check the freedom with which she describes her observations of animals. She doesn’t examine realities enough to be shocked by them⁠—she just feels far away from physical realities. She is, you see, of an unhuman nature. (I’m not concealing anything from you, my boy, I don’t think it would be fair.)”

He fixed his round eyes on Seryozha all the time, as if, in spite of the complacent set of his mouth and carriage of his head, he was expecting Seryozha to say: “O Lord! Pavel Nicholaievitch, you are a liar!” But of course Seryozha said nothing of the sort. He sat in a dream, half listening to his host, half remembering the lost face of Tatiana. He rubbed the bridge of his broad shiny nose wisely. Of course he knew that parents never know anything about their children.

“Saggay Saggayitch,” said Wilfred, “you say nothing. As a friend you will ’llow me to suggest, would it not be better to show a little more vivivacity with this kind gentleman, Mr. Ozz. You don’t talk enough, my dear chap, you don’t make the bezz of yourself. Your future may hang on making bezz of self.”

“When I say unhuman,” went on Pavel, “I don’t mean anything against the child’s temper. She has the sweetest temper, the tenderest heart.⁠ ⁠… She gets her sweetness of nature from my side, of course. She’s a dear girl and perhaps love will teach her a great deal. I used to call her a fairy when she was little, and now sometimes I’m tempted to call her a fairy still, but I’d say it in a different voice now. It’s been a great pain to me. I counted so on a family of robust sons and daughters to hand on my good old name to.⁠ ⁠… They’re a man’s immortality, his children and his children’s children.⁠ ⁠… However, my dear boy, it may very well be that the right husband for Tanya may get the right results with her. One never can tell. Even icebergs melt under some sun or other, and Tanya, as I say, isn’t an iceberg emotionally⁠ ⁠… she has my blood in her as well as her mother’s, and therefore she has her own brand of passionate feelings, like all her breed. She signed that paper with a very good grace⁠—allowing for the natural shrinking of a young girl⁠—and in a sense she is already your wife, with her own eager consent, mark you, which is further than any of the other lads ever got. That paper was drawn up by a professional lawyer, and declares you man and wife. You couldn’t ask for a better paper than that.” He was silent suddenly, pouring himself out some more wine.

Nobody spoke for several minutes, not even Wilfred. Wilfred’s head was nodding; his eyelids and chin were dropping. The clock pointed to half past twelve and Seryozha was proud to find that he was not sleepy.

Pavel began speaking again in a voice of rather defiant surprise. “Just now I said ‘In a sense Tanya is your legal wife.’ But of course really there’s no in a sense about it. She is your wife. That document was drawn up by a professional lawyer; we have all signed it in the presence of Varya and Katya as witnesses. What more could we do to make a marriage legal? There is no priest of our Church available⁠—besides, you and I are too modern to feel the need of the Church’s interference in practical matters like this. In Paris⁠—London⁠—New York⁠—a legal paper, duly drawn up and signed, is enough for a legal marriage. Why should we expect more in Mi-san? My boy, you’re a married man. Congratulations!” Doubt came into his strained eyes again. “Really I don’t know what else one could want to make the thing correct and in order⁠—lacking a priest. It’s not as if there was any unwillingness on either side⁠—you both signed of your own free will, at your own suggestion. She gets a good dowry. You’ll find me a generous father-in-law. All we Ostapenkos are generous to a fault. Your father, Sergei Dmitrivitch, will be delighted at such a good match for you⁠—a dowry of two thousand yen is not to be sniffed at, and there’ll be more later⁠—and he gets a lovely daughter-in-law into the bargain.”

“The paper is legal all right,” said Seryozha solemnly, speaking to the shades of his father and mother, and pursing his face into a man-of-the-worldly look. “As legal as possible. Mr. Chew is a famous lawyer in London. He never would write an illegal paper.”

Wilfred, opening his eyes for a moment, found the eyes of both Russians fixed upon him. He was one who always put the best construction on any ambiguity, and that two Russians should look at him implied some pleasing compliment just uttered in their outlandish tongue. He bowed pleasantly in answer to their look. But bowing, which he always did thoroughly and briskly, being always quite sure of his occasion, now started a ball rolling in his head. Something went on bowing by itself inside his brain; the room bowed round him⁠—or rather curtsied, in silly acknowledgment of this something inside his head that went on bowing. Was his outer skull really wagging? he asked himself in some consternation. Could this uncertain ball be the head of Wilfred Chew, Esquire? A slight bump as his forehead hit the table showed him that his head, though unusually independent, was still attached to his body, but, since the forehead was on the table, he might as well let it stay there. “Then they will think I am simply asleep,” he thought, cunningly. “Any gentleman may go to sleep without being thought morally affected.” It was quite outside his plan actually to go to sleep. His pretense of sleep took on an aspect of revenge, almost, in his own mind as he shut his eyes. “Well, if people will talk Russian for six hours without a break, they can’t be surprised if their superiors seem to go to sleep.” He listened upward, as it were, feeling that he was turning his ears like a dog⁠—listened to the sound of Pavel’s talk. It sounded like shyok-shyeh-shyok-shyeh, and in Wilfred’s ears it swelled and dwindled like the humming one hears when under chloroform, or like the wowing of an airplane engine in the sky.

While he was still marveling at the fact that this contagious bowing craze seemed to be affecting his hearing and making sound bow too, a sudden startling silence fell in the room. The light inside Wilfred’s eyelids changed from scarlet to deep purple. Someone must be taking the lamp away. Heavy feet trampled cautiously out of the room, the rhythm of their tread adjusting itself to the rhythm of Wilfred’s throbbing attention. Tramp-ti⁠—tramp-ti⁠—tramp-ti⁠—and then a check, and a woman’s voice “Ah Pavlik!”⁠—a voice of almost unbearable disappointment.

Wilfred lifted his pendulum head only enough to be able to lean his chin instead of his brow upon his hands. His head might actually roll off if he should rear it unsupported into the swinging air again. Across a glimmering silver plain of lampless tablecloth, he saw a perfectly still golden scene framed in the doorway. Pavel Ostapenko, holding the lamp a little crooked but not dangerously so, stood facing his wife in the passage, his eyes stretched to an alert glare, like a squirrel’s eyes. Varvara, in a blue cotton kimono, stood defiantly across the passage, watching her husband with a defiant dark look. Her wine-colored birthmark looked like an eccentric shadow thrown by a more ominous flame than the lamp’s light. Seryozha, against the opposite wall, was drawing a little parcel from his pack. “The fish’s liver and heart,” thought Wilfred. “He is going to face the devil in that red and white Tanya woman. She sleeps behind that door at the top of the little matted slope out of the kitchen. I saw her go in when I was washing at the pump.” “Pavlik!” cried Varvara again with a low violence of voice, but her husband took one step towards her, took Seryozha’s⁠—arm and pointed over his wife’s shoulder⁠—“At the devil’s door,” thought Wilfred. Varvara put both her hands in her mouth, cramming all her fingers between her lips as though frantically trying to tear them to pieces. She looked like a witch, grinning fixedly through the fringe of her fingers. Pavel began talking again. Wow⁠—wow⁠—wow⁠—, heard Wilfred. Wilfred’s heavy eyelids dropped like a curtain on the bright scene, and when next he half lifted them there was no light except the light of the kitchen fire, blurring and quickening on the passage walls, like breath dimming a windowpane. There were distant voices in the kitchen. Wilfred’s perceptive senses became mixed in a drowsiness, and the voices became a cloud, a curious menacing cloud like a wing, each spasm of sound a feather in the wing⁠—the whole flaked cloud coming nearer and nearer on a wind that blew in regular throbbing gusts. Before this wind all the trees in the world bowed, and all the leaves on all the trees were blown so as to show their white linings⁠—white flecks showing silver in a moonlight that streamed from no visible moon. The moonlight had a breathless quality, in spite of the wind. Everything in the world was flawed and burnt with sparks of white; all the stars of the sky, fleeing from that stupendous winged dragon of a cloud, were lying dying in agony in the dust, like fish thrown up by a great departed wave. Trees, houses, deserts, and mountains were caked, clogged, with dying, gasping stars. The pursuing cloud strode across the sky; one could hear now the approaching boom⁠—boom⁠—boom of its wings. And Wilfred, sweating with excitement, addressed the jury, though his voice was a little thick. “I know how you bind dragons, gentlemen,” said Wilfred. “With one hand you take them behind the gills and with the other behind the wingpits⁠—(wingpits? Well, armpits. Why not wingpits?) Yes, with the other firmly under the wingpits and thus they are perfectly helpless.” He said this bravely and the jury was obviously impressed. The jury numbered thousands⁠—their little silver-white faces upturned, all over the twilit limitless hall. One must be brave before such a crowd of puny dying white faces⁠—yet, as the wide earthshaking booming of wings drew closer and closer, Wilfred wondered whether he could really master so frightful an enemy single-handed. Boom! boom! boom! boom!⁠—the monster was upon him; it had only a little blank disc for a face⁠—how much more terrible than gnashing teeth and flashing eyes! Wilfred suddenly shouted in such a great voice that the strong wind was checked and the galloping cloud thrown back on its haunches. Asmodeus. Asmodeus. Asmodeus. Now what? thought Wilfred, mad to show his own monstrous power. One hand pinching the gills and the other the soft bending ribs (a lizard’s ribs), a twirl⁠ ⁠… round and round the sequin-scaled body whipped the rope, flipped skillfully by Wilfred’s heroic hand. “I am bound⁠—I am bound⁠—I am bound,” piped the little fading disc that was the demon’s face. But, oh, the scales were cold. They burned like naked ice. The great icy body leaped, squirmed, and writhed like a hooked fish. Here, a limb struggled loose⁠—Wilfred lashed it with another loop; there, the tail began sweeping free⁠—it was bound before more than a paltry million stars had been annihilated; here, a claw reached out and was instantly netted. The vast faceless thing heaved, powerless, agonized.⁠ ⁠… Yet, what was that⁠—boom! boom! boom! boom! again? Was some outlying coil breaking free? A scarlet air was blinding the world, a scarlet pain was riveted like a helmet on the hero’s brow. Walls, a table, lamplight, a smell of roast goose⁠—little dazzling homely things imprisoned him. Here was the room again, safe now from its terrific menace. Pavel Ostapenko was coming in with the lamp. He would want to hear the news of Wilfred’s victory, of course, yet it was difficult to talk through such a taste in the mouth⁠—such a band of pain round the skull.

“I bound Asmodeus! I bound him!” cried Wilfred. “Ah⁠—my head! my head!⁠ ⁠… Yet I bound him⁠—Asmodeus.⁠ ⁠…”

Ostapenko sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands.

“Where is Saggay Saggayitch?” asked Wilfred, thickly, feeling the need of an interpreter.

“Sergei Sergeievitch? Oi! where⁠—where?” groaned Pavel in English.

This unexpected proof of linguistic sympathy encouraged Wilfred to begin to tell Ostapenko about his dream in detail. He never could quite believe that people really didn’t understand English. Incomprehension was a sort of coyness on their part, which brisk treatment might help them to overcome.

But Ostapenko only replied by groans; only when Varvara came in did the talk begin again, and then, of course, in no more intelligent language than that outlandish Russian. Shyeh-shyeh shyok-shyok wow-wow⁠—as though by its pulsing it was measuring off the seconds of this endless night.

“Don’t Russians ever go to bed?” thought Wilfred. Clasping his aching head without disguise, he got up and stumbled over to the sofa. None of them cared that he had bound Asmodeus for their sake. By the way⁠—why Asmodeus? He lay down on the sofa and was instantly drowned in profound dark sleep.

“You needn’t look at me like that, Varya,” said Pavel, raising his tired face. “It seems to me you have lost your senses. Here we have a charming and eligible young man⁠—a kinsman of my own⁠—whom our daughter has chosen willingly as her husband⁠—”

“Pavlik⁠—think.”

“Well, my dear, I’m not jumping to any conclusions. I’m only asking you not to be so sure that your daughter shared your own ignorance as to the actual significance of that paper she so eagerly signed. She has plenty of sense, and she must have realized that one doesn’t sign lawyers’ papers without committing oneself to something. She realized from the first, I think, that it made a married woman of her. She was probably waiting and wondering, in her room⁠—a neglected bride⁠—”

He paused to listen for that urgent, “Pavlik⁠—think” again, but it did not come. Hearing no protest from his wife, he allowed his always self-sufficient mind to nurse the illusion that he had prevailed. Varya believed him⁠—and why not? He had told her the truth. The paper was binding, the marriage sanctified by lawyers’ law, according to Western European custom if not Russian custom. He was not accustomed to imagining what lay behind other people’s silences, nor had he any ears to hear things that were not uttered. His roving telltale eyes, however, refused to look at his wife.

His voice began again with a challenging confident sound. “Tanya’s consent means the more because she is by no means easy to please.⁠ ⁠… Seven betrothals behind her, all broken by her own overfastidiousness and whims. Here we have the pair, obviously falling in love at first sight, like the story books. Here we have Sergei Sergeievitch only too willing to overlook the unfortunate chops and changes of the past (which we have not concealed from him), proposing for our daughter most ardently, and Tanya at once showing an equal eagerness to be his wife. Here we have, most fortunately, on the spot, an English-trained lawyer of a high degree of learning, kindly arranging for us a legal marriage paper such as is daily drawn up in London or Paris or New York or any other sophisticated city⁠—a form of marriage which, in the absence of a Russian priest, is the best we can possibly hope for. How very very much more fortunate we are than those Russian families⁠—we know many of them⁠—who in these hard times, for lack of any religious marriage facilities and too ignorant to obtain legal help, have to dispense with any ceremony at all, however naturally moral, modest, and respectable they may be. We, on the other hand, have a paper, properly signed and in my safe keeping, and if things go wrong I now have a means of protecting my daughter⁠—”

“I can’t hear their voices in the kitchen now,” said Varvara.

“Well then, we must suppose they’ve done all the talking they want⁠—in the kitchen,” said Pavel with a blustering uneasiness. “But, Varya, listen⁠—what other marriage ceremony can you hope for? What would satisfy you? True, in old Russia nothing short of a ceremony in church would have contented us (little as I, a modernist, believe in these superstitions). But we are not in Russia now. We are exiles. We must no longer feel provincial and Russian in our prejudices. We are citizens of the world now. What is good enough for sophisticated modern people in the great cities of Europe must be good enough for us. We must move with the times. There’s nothing else for it. Angels aren’t likely to come down and conduct an orthodox Russian marriage service for us. That paper, I assure you, satisfied me, a business man, as being comprehensive and legal. You can’t read English, but I can, and I read every word of it. In it Sergei Sergeievitch swears to be a faithful husband to our Tanya, to support her as long as they both live, to provide for her in case of his death, to take her to his home and treat her as what she is⁠—his legal wife. What more can he do? He has signed the paper⁠—you saw him do it. The lawyer had signed it already. I have signed it to show my approval and my willingness to do my part⁠—give our girl the dowry that we always meant to give her, and pay for the valuable services of the lawyer. Tanya signed it with her eyes open. I feel perfectly satisfied about it.”

“Then why were you groaning just now as I came into the room?” asked Varvara.

“Why⁠ ⁠… well, I’m tired, of course, and overwrought. One has one’s feelings as a father, and one’s only child’s marriage night is an emotional experience for any parent. Even though I am perfectly satisfied that the children are man and wife, and that⁠—Well, Varya, what’s the use of arguing? I gave in to you on every point you mentioned. I let you have a talk alone with the child⁠—and I don’t believe you did anything more helpful than cry over her. I admitted the sense of your suggestion that young Sergei shouldn’t immediately take her away from her home, and he willingly promised to stay here for a fortnight, so as to allow the little creature to adapt herself to marriage in the comfort of familiar surroundings, with you and me at hand. And you saw how Tanya accepted what I said. She was listening attentively to me, I could see that, though she never has a closely attentive look; and if she was staring at her husband all the time, well, isn’t that natural, in a young bride? And then, when I had explained to her gently that by signing that lawyer’s paper the marriage had become a legal thing and that her husband was now entitled to some proof of her love and duty, did she protest? My dear Varya, you irritate me inexpressibly when you look like that. I ask you, did she? Compare her behavior tonight with what she did when Boris kissed her at the kissing game⁠—with the fuss she kicked up when Sasha Weber pressed her to marry him before the end of the summer⁠—with her screaming hysterical fit when Petya Isaev kissed her in the garden on her birthday. Well, I ask you⁠—what did she do tonight when she came back from her weep with you? She walked across the kitchen to her husband and just said his name, Seryozha⁠—just like that, in a soft voice⁠—Seryozha”⁠—(Ostapenko wheezed a restrained falsetto). “Why, Varya, what’s the matter with you? You yourself were convinced at the time. You said to me, ‘Come away, Pavlik, it’s their affair, after all. Let’s leave them to work it out together, whichever way they wish.’ ”

Varvara was shaken. “Can it be really all right?” she asked of the witnessing air. She was so well accustomed to thinking that everything had an odd contrary rightness of its own, if an Ostapenko thought it right. “Oh, Pavlik⁠—if you would only come free of these words and tell me out of your own heart if it’s all right.”

He went on talking. She had known he would never come free of words. He could not. She knew the expression of his mouth⁠—the set of lips determined to convince by words alone. Even when she asked him, as she often did, to think⁠—Pavlik⁠—think⁠—she knew it was impossible for him to think as well as talk⁠—to go behind his own plausible words, to compare them with the facts in his own brain, and trim his argument to the shape of his inmost conviction. She knew that words were in themselves the stuff of his conviction⁠—he believed what he said, instead of saying what he believed. Yet this was Ostapenkoism; she did not criticize it; words were his genius, she thought. Outsiders might say that he quibbled, but his wife shaped his quibbling to fit into her pride in him. Only Pavlik could quibble as superbly as he quibbled. Only Pavlik could make a thing actually true by proving ingeniously that it was true. He could mold truth. She began to see that this elaborate quibble about Mr. Chew’s paper was sealing the paper itself with an actuality, a significance, that it had not seemed to possess. The paper had floated as negligibly as a dead leaf into Varvara’s notice, and now here it was, transmuted by Ostapenko argument into a heavy lawyer’s parchment, a thing to be kept in the safe, a thing solid enough for the future to be built on. It blew in like a leaf and settled like a stone. Pavlik’s talk and magic had turned the blowing fancy to stone⁠—to the cornerstone of the house.

Varvara was in the grip of reaction from her first moment of furious anger with Pavlik and her suspicion of him. When she had first seen him walking toward the kitchen threshold, pointing out Tanya’s door to young Sergei Malinin, all her faith in him had seemed for a moment to be cracking. At that moment she could have torn him to pieces; he was something namelessly hideous⁠—naked of words at last. Now that he had clothed his intentions with their usual fine wrappings of explanation, she felt like a child who, in the dark, thinks it sees in a moving shadow at the door a bogey arriving frightfully to devour it⁠—and then in the next moment identifies the thing as the sweet familiar shadow of its mother and feels incredibly safe again. Varvara felt the remorse such a child might feel⁠—remorse and sheepishness, for having so mistaken that loving shadow, misheard that dear step, repulsed with panic a friend so tried and so trusted. Must she not make up for her first panic of misunderstanding by understanding with double intensity?

It was the more possible for Pavel to convince Varvara, because she felt herself, in this matter, on his ground, not her own. She had no illusions about the incompleteness of her own nature, though she would have resented bitterly any suggestion that an outsider could see her lack of life. Living with the ebullient Pavel had taught her secret humility. She therefore attached no moral superiority to her fear of love⁠—no you ought not⁠—only an alas, I am not. Her natural instinct, even if Tatiana had been married with every possible rite of orthodoxy, would have been to lie awake with tears of horror throughout her daughter’s wedding night. This she recognized as morbidness, and was therefore the more inclined to distrust her own almost unbearable instinct of reluctance to believe in the sudden significance of this lawyer’s paper. Paper blessing⁠—church’s blessing⁠—archimandrite’s blessing⁠—God’s blessing⁠—her answer to each or all would have been⁠—No⁠—no⁠—no⁠—not for my Tanya.⁠ ⁠…

Among Ostapenkos, she was accustomed to being more sober but less inspired. She had felt essentially right as she barred her husband’s path to her daughter’s door, but she was used to feeling right, yet knowing herself wrong. The strange rather than the reasonable must be her accepted standard. The breath of sobriety she introduced was an irrelevance, in this strange family she loved.

Yet⁠—in this case⁠—Tanya⁠—that white baffling door of Tanya’s fortress to be knocked upon⁠—to be assailed with such abrupt news from the strong thick world of men.⁠ ⁠…

“I’ll just stand in the passage for a minute to listen if I hear voices,” she said. “He may be arguing with her, trying to persuade her against her will. He’s just a boy⁠—it’s difficult for him. Supposing she’s crying.⁠ ⁠… She cries so quietly.⁠ ⁠…”

“A funny thing,” said Pavel, “to be expecting to hear the bride crying on a night like this.⁠ ⁠…”

Varvara stood in the passage for a minute or two. There was no sound. She turned. Through the front door, left open for coolness this hot night, she saw the houses of Mi-san roofed with silver; she heard the distant barking of a dog sounding like a beating on copper. The alchemist stillness transmuted to bright metal the polished leaves of the zinnias and shrubs in the garden. The sky shone like a spangled dragon’s wing. There were even stars in the dust of the street⁠—a dust of stars, too, over the brick material of the frame of the door, and stars in every spider’s-web. After all, she’s just another flower in another garden, thought Varya dreamily, another starry seed on the wind, blowing home to earth. She was thinking wordlessly; she was seeing a vision of the breaking of dear loneliness, the breaking of the virgin round world by the forces of fire and water and wind, the breaking open of strong remote mountains, breaking into chasms and seas, craters, valleys and peaks⁠—the dumb world breaking with a song of thunder, and broken, being clothed with intention at last⁠—clothed with snows and flowers and blue veils of ice and deserts of corn-colored sand and feathers of fire⁠—a world the richer for its broken integrity. To make a statue was to break a stone. Being alive was a breaking of death. To become something was to shatter the peace of being nothing.

Come home⁠—come home⁠—come home, Tanya.⁠ ⁠…

Varvara roused herself with a start, finding her lips parted to utter a call. She went back into the living-room and found her husband groaning again, his head in his hands.

“What is distressing you so, Pavlik? You are so sure it is all right, and yet you moan and mourn.”

“Tschah! I don’t know. Leave me alone. No, I’ll tell you. I’m not worrying about our Tanya⁠—she’s all right. She has to grow up sooner or later, and she showed more feeling about this boy than she did about any of the others. I’m sure we were right to strike while the iron was hot. No, I worry about the boy⁠—a decent bright boy⁠—and my cousin’s son, too. What if it were really true that there’s a curse on any lover who comes near our Tanya? We couldn’t say we hadn’t had full warning⁠—she really has sucked the life out of every one of the lads who were attracted by her good looks. Supposing it really is a fact that there is something deadly in her icy pretty looks. Supposing we find this nice boy dead by her side in the morning.⁠ ⁠… What should we say⁠—how should we explain it? The neighbors would⁠—all say ‘well, you’ve had fair warning, haven’t you? It’s as good as murder.’ One can’t disregard such a possibility. There’s something so very strange in the perfectly consistent string of disasters that has followed each of her affairs⁠—disasters to the lads themselves, I mean. I’ve heard of such curses” (Pavel always had precedents ready). “I knew of a nice old woman⁠—very rich, very quiet, very good-natured and considerate⁠—whose servants always died before they had been in her service a year. She was obliged at last to go and live in a hotel at Yalta, and even there, they say, the chambermaids kept on developing mysterious diseases. There are such cases⁠—it’s no good shutting one’s eyes to them. There certainly is something fatal about our Tanya’s effect on men⁠—there isn’t a single one of her admirers that hasn’t reason to regret ever having set eyes on her. Sasha’s dead; Isaev, in the Chinese army, is as good as dead; young Stepan Soloviev is a hopeless sot; Boris threw up a respectable job to go and be a pimp in Shanghai; Vanya seems to have gone entirely off his head. One can’t ignore all that, Varya, one can’t say it’s coincidence⁠—it does look like the work of some kind of devil that possesses our girl. Have we thrown away the life of this nice boy, Sergei Sergeievitch? His affair has gone further than any of the others⁠—the curse would affect him more immediately and fatally.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Varya, I have a dreadful premonition⁠ ⁠… I have a terrible feeling that in the morning we shall find him dead⁠—and Tanya icy and quiet as she always is, no sorrier than if she had crushed a spider by mistake. What could we say? How could we explain it to his father and mother?”

“It’s the night makes you have such fancies, Pavlik,” said Varvara. “Two or three o’clock in the morning is always the time when people who can’t sleep have their dreadful fancies.”

“Two or three o’clock in the morning is when people die,” said Pavel Ostapenko, shuddering. “O God! what have I done that my only child is so cursed that I have to fear so for everyone who comes near her? What a silence is in this house, Varya! One can hear no sound of life at all.”

“One couldn’t, anyway, from here.”

Ostapenko looked at the clock. “I wonder why people die in the small hours. I wonder if it’s because all the demons of the night have gathered strength out of the dark by then.”

“No, certainly it isn’t. It is because the pulse beats most weakly then.”

“Yes, but the demons of the night perhaps seize that opportunity. Perhaps people always die then for that reason. The dead never come back to explain to us the deadly wiles of demons. O God! perhaps the boy, even as we speak, feels something freezing his heart, and thinks: ‘They told me the truth about this haunted girl. Why wasn’t I wise in time?’ ”

“Perhaps you are a little tired, Pavlik,” said Varvara. “Or even a little⁠—Well, you know, Pavlik, you drank a great deal of champagne.”

Pavel groaned again. His sense of guilt about his insistence on the consummation of the marriage had strangely disguised itself, transferred itself to a fear for Seryozha’s safety. His imagination was very strong when dealing with the inhuman and mysterious, although it could never penetrate a fellow mortal’s skin and show him a glimpse of the reasonable and sensitive hearts of his neighbors.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” suggested Varvara. “You are doing no good by sitting up⁠—only tormenting yourself.”

Pavel rose to his feet and left the room so promptly that Varvara looked after him in surprise. She was not accustomed to having her suggestions so instantly followed.

After a moment she rose, too. She looked down for a minute at the sleeping Wilfred. His mouth was wide open; his gold tooth looked ashamed with so much uncovered pink and cavernous mouth round it; as a rule, its glory was enhanced by the discreetness of its glimpsed glitter. “How hospitable we are to our visitors,” thought Varvara with a faint sneer, looking down at Wilfred’s helpless sagging face. Then she went to her bedroom, pausing a moment in the passage to listen to the silence.

Her husband was not in their bedroom. She lay down on the bed in her kimono, and shut her eyes. In the glimmering steel light of early dawn, the dark mark on her cheek looked like a third sunken eye.

She opened her eyes an hour later to find that her husband was still not by her side. As she went back along the passage to look for him, he came in at the front door, looking exhausted and wretched leaning on an earthy spade.

“Why, Pavlik, where have you been? You are all earthy⁠—look at your hands. You look so tired.⁠ ⁠… What have you been doing?”

“Oh leave me alone⁠—don’t nag at me!⁠ ⁠… Oh, Varya, I have such a terrible presentiment of evil to that boy. I’m sure she breathes death⁠ ⁠… the more I think of it, the more sure I am.⁠ ⁠… We are as good as murderers⁠ ⁠…”

Varvara sighed. “Oh, Pavlik, how obstinately fanciful you are when you have been drinking. Now think⁠—think of the ordinary everyday world; think of our dear little Tanya learning to knit socks for you, learning to ride a horse, helping me to make the beds and to shell peas.⁠ ⁠… Demons don’t live in such simple things. Here is Katya⁠—she shall make us a cup of tea each.”

For the first beam of the sun, aiming like a wary archer across the red plain, always woke Katya to her work. The energetic old woman had no alarm clock; she relied on the sharp tip of the first ray to pry her little red eyelids apart.

“A cup of tea,” she repeated after Varvara, opening that kitchen door which had been such a tiptoe secret all night, and stumping briskly into the kitchen.

Varvara stood in the front doorway, watching the sun rise⁠—watching the sun climb surefooted up straight rails of red cloud.

Pavel followed Katya into the kitchen. “Katya, you know our little Tanya was married last night,” said Pavel in an uneasy whisper, pinning the old woman’s attention with his wide sharp eyes.

“Married!” exclaimed Katya shrilly.

“Pssst! Yes, married⁠—by this Chinese guest who is a lawyer and knows the London way of marrying without a priest.”

“There is no such thing as marriage without a priest,” began Katya loudly.

“Devil take you, old woman, I tell you there is!” said Pavel, convulsed for a second with fury by this bluff attack on his edifice. “Tanya is married. She is a wife, legally. She is in that room there with her husband⁠—and with my blessing, I tell you. Do you think I should not be the first to make my only daughter’s honor safe? Don’t be such a fool, old woman, but listen to me. You know Tanya⁠—you’ve known her all her life. You know she’s not like other girls, quite⁠—easy in love, accustomed to kissing and flirting. I want to know if they’re all right⁠—I must know⁠—and I daren’t look in⁠—I daren’t.⁠ ⁠…”

“Pavel Nicholaievitch, you’ve been drinking. Why should you want to spy on a man and his wife⁠—if man and wife they are?⁠ ⁠…”

“They are⁠—they are!” cried Pavel frantically. “I swear they are legally man and wife.⁠ ⁠… It’s only that I have a presentiment.⁠ ⁠… Katya, be a good woman and just open that door a crack⁠—just peep in.⁠ ⁠… I must know the worst now.⁠ ⁠… I daren’t look myself.⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, tschah!” said Katya. She waddled up the little matted slope and listened at Tanya’s door. “There’s no sound,” she said.

“No sound!” echoed Pavel, terrified. “Ah, dear Katya, just open the door a crack, very quietly, tell me how they look.”

Alarmed and shocked by his wild manner, Katya cautiously opened the door a very little, and put her fat red face to the crack. When she turned her face it was creased into a sentimental smile. “I must say they are a pretty pair,” she said, as pleased as though she had had a hand in the creation of their beauty. “As pretty as fairies, asleep in each other’s arms, his lips to her cheek⁠ ⁠…”

“O my God! Safe! Safe!” cried Pavel, and rushed down the passage, calling: “Tea⁠—tea! Varitchka, where’s my tea?” Then he ran like a boy back into the kitchen. “Katya, you might tell Yi to fill up that deep trench he will find in the garden to the east of the poppy bed.”

“I can see it from here,” said Katya. “It looks like a grave.”

“Yes⁠—yes. I thought I might want to bury some rubbish today.⁠ ⁠… But I don’t want it now. Tell Yi to set to work on it at once.⁠ ⁠… O God!” he cried, running back to Varvara. “Varitchka, can’t we praise God or something⁠ ⁠… ?”