Part 17

The latter turned and at once rushed to him.

Sanin cut short his transports, handed him the note, and explained to whom and how he was to deliver it…. Emil listened attentively.

“So that no one sees?” he inquired, assuming an important and mysterious air, that said, “We understand the inner meaning of it all!”

“Yes, my friend,” said Sanin and he was a little disconcerted; however, he patted Emil on the cheek…. “And if there should be an answer…. You will bring me the answer, won’t you? I will stay at home.”

“Don’t worry yourself about that!” Emil whispered gaily; he ran off, and as he ran nodded once more to him.

Sanin went back home, and without lighting a candle, flung himself on the sofa, put his hands behind his head, and abandoned himself to those sensations of newly conscious love, which it is no good even to describe. One who has felt them knows their languor and sweetness; to one who has felt them not, one could never make them known.

The door opened—Emil’s head appeared.

“I have brought it,” he said in a whisper: “here it is—the answer!”

He showed and waved above his head a folded sheet of paper.

Sanin leaped up from the sofa and snatched it out of Emil’s hand. Passion was working too powerfully within him: he had no thought of reserve now, nor of the observance of a suitable demeanour—even before this boy, her brother. He would have been scrupulous, he would have controlled himself—if he could!

He went to the window, and by the light of a street lamp which stood just opposite the house, he read the following lines:—

I beg you, I beseech you—don’t come to see us, don’t show yourself all day to-morrow. It’s necessary, absolutely necessary for me, and then everything shall be settled. I know you will not say no, because …

“GEMMA.”

Sanin read this note twice through. Oh, how touchingly sweet and beautiful her handwriting seemed to him! He thought a little, and turning to Emil, who, wishing to give him to understand what a discreet young person he was, was standing with his face to the wall, and scratching on it with his finger-nails, he called him aloud by name.

Emil ran at once to Sanin. “What do you want me to do?”

“Listen, my young friend…”

“Monsieur Dimitri,” Emil interrupted in a plaintive voice, “why do you address me so formally?”

Sanin laughed. “Oh, very well. Listen, my dearest boy—(Emil gave a little skip of delight)—listen; there you understand, there, you will say, that everything shall be done exactly as is wished—(Emil compressed his lips and nodded solemnly)—and as for me … what are you doing to-morrow, my dear boy?”

“I? what am I doing? What would you like me to do?”

“If you can, come to me early in the morning—and we will walk about the country round Frankfort till evening…. Would you like to?”

Emil gave another little skip. “I say, what in the world could be jollier? Go a walk with you—why, it’s simply glorious! I’ll be sure to come!”

“And if they won’t let you?”

“They will let me!”

“Listen … Don’t say there that I asked you to come for the whole day.”

“Why should I? But I’ll get away all the same! What does it matter?”

Emil warmly kissed Sanin, and ran away.

Sanin walked up and down the room a long while, and went late to bed. He gave himself up to the same delicate and sweet sensations, the same joyous thrill at facing a new life. Sanin was very glad that the idea had occurred to him to invite Emil to spend the next day with him; he was like his sister. “He will recall her,” was his thought.

But most of all, he marvelled how he could have been yesterday other than he was to-day. It seemed to him that he had loved Gemma for all time; and that he had loved her just as he loved her to-day.