Now he was in his room, the room which Mascha had prepared for him with such loving care. For the first time in years he was in a home. Everything about him was simple but home-like; a few flowers, a few tasteful ornaments, several photographs in pretty little frames. Every article of furniture had a physiognomy which bade him welcome. A feeling of home-like warmth and satisfaction overcame him. He looked about him with emotion. She had taken such pains, poor Mascha! There stood a picture of Colia as a four-year-old boy; there she was herself, as a baby, with bare little arms; and there, everywhere, pictures of Natalie. She had collected everything that could please him. He could have felt so happy if--if--ah! He held his hand before his eyes. How beautiful it might have been, and how horrible it all was! His son he had not seen since that fearful farewell evening in the Hôtel Westminster; all tenderness had vanished from their relations. At regular intervals he received stiff, formal letters from Nikolai, in which the young diplomat related the most important events of his life--that was all. Lensky knew that Nikolai advanced rapidly and brilliantly in his career; he guessed that his son, in spite of all, felt dissatisfied, and his heart remained closed to his father.
Mascha? That was quite different; she had never found anything to criticise in him, her love had ever remained the same. But she was unhappy, miserably unhappy--she, his darling, his idol. And whose fault was it, then?
With the manner of a being weighed down by a burden, he sinks into an arm-chair. What had he done? how was it, really? He had loved them all so boundlessly--Natalie and the children--and still, what had really driven him into this desolate, restless existence which resolved itself into disgust and misery? It had always been the same, even in these last years it had sometimes come over him; but now it was over, his nature had entered upon a new phase, the wild thirst for pleasure was quenched; he was weary--weary unto death.
He sought something supernatural to support him. A mysterious longing tormented him. From without sounded the plashing of the waves, monotonous, sad, hopeless, like the sobs of a rejected human being driven out into the cold.