Did Valeria see all this? The shutters of her
windows were closed ... but perhaps she was standing
behind them.
At dinner-time she entered the dining-room, and was
very quiet and affectionate; but she still complained
of being weary. Yet there was no agitation about
her, nor any of her former constant surprise and secret
fear; and when, on the day after Muzio’s departure,
Fabio again set about her portrait, he found in her
features that pure expression, the temporary eclipse
of which had so disturbed him ... and his brush flew
lightly and confidently over the canvas.
Husband and wife began to live their life as of yore.
Muzio had vanished for them as though he had never
existed. And both Fabio and Valeria seemed to
have entered into a compact not to recall him by a
single sound, not to inquire about his further fate;
and it remained a mystery for all others as well.
Muzio really did vanish, as though he had sunk through
the earth. One day Fabio thought himself bound
to relate to Valeria precisely what had occurred on
that fateful night ... but she, probably divining
his intention, held her breath, and her eyes narrowed
as though she were anticipating a blow.... And
Fabio understood her: he did not deal her that
blow.
One fine autumnal day Fabio was putting the finishing
touches to the picture of his Cecilia; Valeria was
sitting at the organ, and her fingers were wandering
over the keys.... Suddenly, contrary to her own
volition, from beneath her fingers rang out that Song
of Love Triumphant which Muzio had once played,—and
at that same instant, for the first time since her
marriage, she felt within her the palpitation of a
new, germinating life.... Valeria started and
stopped short....
What was the meaning of this? Could it be....
With this word the manuscript came to an end.
A TALE
(1882)
In the spring of 1878 there lived in Moscow, in a
small wooden house on Shabolovka Street, a young man
five-and-twenty years of age, Yakoff Aratoff by name.
With him lived his aunt, an old maid, over fifty years
of age, his father’s sister, Platonida Ivanovna.
She managed his housekeeping and took charge of his
expenditures, of which Aratoff was utterly incapable.
He had no other relations. Several years before,
his father, a petty and not wealthy noble of the T——
government, had removed to Moscow, together with him
and Platonida Ivanovna who, by the way, was always
called Platosha; and her nephew called her so too.
When he quitted the country where all of them had
constantly dwelt hitherto, old Aratoff had settled
in the capital with the object of placing his son
in the university, for which he had himself prepared
him; he purchased for a trifling sum a small house
