A clock in the house strikes the quarter past six. In a few minutes her aunt will return. She goes.
Now she is on the street. The Avenue Wagram lies behind her. She is in the Champs Elysées. She beckons to an empty cab. "To the nearest landing of the _Swallow_," she says.
The _Swallow_, the pleasure steamer which daily runs between Paris and St. Cloud, is about to start when Mascha reaches the landing. She will wait for the next boat. "_Mais non, ma bonne fille_," says a coal-blackened fireman. "_Montez toujours_," and he helps her on board.
Klip, klap, plash the waves on the ship's wooden sides. Maschenka watches everything very calmly. At times she forgets why she is here, but for not a moment is she free from a hateful cold weight on her mind. Occasionally she involuntarily makes plans for the morrow; then she shudders. To-morrow at this time--where will she be?
"Meudon--Meudon!" A little gray city nestling against a green hill.
Every time that the steamer stops, she says: "It must be now." Each time she will land, seek some place between the green, drooping willows, in order undisturbed to carry out what she has undertaken--once more kneel down in the tender spring grass, between the dear young blossoms, confide her weak, child-soul to her dead mother, and then-- Yes; at each station she wishes to land, and yet cannot, and remains sitting as if paralyzed with boundless anxiety of the fearful deed to which she would force herself, and against which every fibre of her warm young life rebels.
All the beauty in this laughing, sunny world passes through her mind. In vain does she try to fix her mind on a glorified eternity, and with all her tormenting thoughts mingles a cowardly fear, not only of death, but of the physical torment which precedes death, of the horrible gasping for breath in the water.
"St. Cloud!" It is the last station. Some one of the ship officials asks her if she wishes to land. She rises. It grows black before her eyes. A cold sweat is on her forehead, dizzily she sinks back on the seat.
Slowly the boat works up the stream to Paris. Around its plump wooden body the waves plash sweetly and soothingly; between the whisper of the trees on the banks one hears the jubilant twittering of the birds who rejoice in the last sunbeams.