Litvinov went quickly up the staircase of the _Hôtel de l’Europe_; a little girl of thirteen, with a sly little face of Kalmuck cast, who had apparently been on the look-out for him, stopped him, saying in Russian: ‘Come this way, please; Irina Pavlovna will be here directly.’ He looked at her in perplexity. She smiled, repeated: ‘Come along, come along,’ and led him to a small room, facing Irina’s bedroom, and filled with travelling trunks and portmanteaus, then at once disappeared, closing the door very softly. Litvinov had not time to look about him, before the door was quickly opened, and before him in a pink ball-dress, with pearls in her hair and on her neck, stood Irina. She simply rushed at him, clutched him by both hands, and for a few instants was speechless; her eyes were shining, and her bosom heaving as though she had run up to a height. ‘I could not receive ... you there,’ she began in a hurried whisper: ‘we are just going to a dinner party, but I wanted above everything to see you.... That is your betrothed, I suppose, with whom I met you to-day?’ ‘Yes, that was my betrothed,’ said Litvinov, with emphasis on the word ‘was.’ ‘And so I wanted to see you for one minute, to tell you that you must consider yourself absolutely free, that everything that happened yesterday ought not to affect your plans....’ ‘Irina!’ cried Litvinov, ‘why are you saying this?’ He uttered these words in a loud voice. There was the note in them of unbounded passion. Irina involuntarily closed her eyes for a minute. ‘Oh, my sweet one!’ she went on in a whisper still more subdued, but with unrestrained emotion, ‘you don’t know how I love you, but yesterday I only paid my debt, I made up for the past.... Ah! I could not give you back my youth, as I would, but I have laid no obligations on you, I have exacted no promise of any sort of you, my sweet! Do what you will, you are free as air, you are bound in no way, understand that, understand that!’ ‘But I can’t live without you, Irina,’ Litvinov interrupted, in a whisper now; ‘I am yours for ever and always, since yesterday.... I can only breathe at your feet....’ He stooped down all in a tremble to kiss her hands. Irina gazed at his bent head. ‘Then let me say,’ she said, ‘that I too am ready for anything, that I too will consider no one, and nothing. As you decide, so it shall be. I, too, am for ever yours ... yours.’ Some one tapped warily at the door. Irina stooped, whispered once more, ‘Yours ... good-bye!’ Litvinov felt her breath on his hair, the touch of her lips. When he stood up, she was no longer in the room, but her dress was rustling in the corridor, and from the distance came the voice of Ratmirov: ‘_Eh bien? Vous ne venez pas?_’