Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume V).djvu/285

Rh given orders to be driven to the railway station, and had departed by the mail train—to what destination was not known. Their things had been packed and their bills paid ever since the morning. Tatyana had asked Litvinov to take her letter to the post, obviously with the object of getting him out of the way. He ventured to ask the hall-porter whether the ladies had left any letters for him, but the porter replied in the negative, and looked amazed even; it was clear that this sudden exit from rooms taken for a week struck him too as strange and dubious. Litvinov turned his back on him, and locked himself up in his room. He did not leave it till the following day: the greater part of the night he was sitting at the table, writing, and tearing what he had written. . . . The dawn was already beginning when he finished his task—it was a letter to Irina.