ially accomplished my
object; anyhow, at this time, in my ideas about myself, I had got so
far as to recognise that I had an exclusive right to exist, that I had
the necessary greatness to deserve to live my life, and that I was
fully competent to play a great historical part therein. And a woman
was now warming me with her body, a wretched, battered, hunted
creature, who had no place and no value in life, and whom I had never
thought of helping till she helped me herself, and whom I really would
not have known how to help in any way even if the thought of it had
occurred to me.

Ah! I was ready to think that all this was happening to me in a
dream--in a disagreeable, an oppressive dream.

But, ugh! it was impossible for me to think that, for cold drops of
rain were dripping down upon me, the woman was pressing close to me,
her warm breath was fanning my face, and--despite a slight odor of
vodka--it did me good. The wind howled and raged, the rain smote upon
the skiff, the waves splashed, and both of us, embracing each other
convulsively, nevertheless shivered with cold. All this was only too
real, and I am certain that nobody ever dreamed such an oppressive and
horrid dream as that reality.

But Natasha was talking all the time of something or other, talking
kindly and sympathetically, as only women can talk. Beneath the
influence of her voice and kindly words a little fire began to burn up
within me, and something inside my heart thawed in consequence.

Then tears poured from my eyes like a hailstorm, washing away from my
heart much that was evil, much that war, stupid, much sorrow and dirt
which had fastened upon it before that night. Natasha comforted me.

"Come, come, that will do, little one! Don't take on! That'll do! God
will give you another chance ... you will right yourself and stand in
your proper place again ... and it will be all right..."

And she kept kissing me ... many kisses did she give me ... burning
kisses ... and all for nothing...

Those were the first kisses from a woman that had ever been bestowed
upon me, and they were the best kisses too, for all the subsequent
kisses cost me frightfully dear, and really gave me nothing at all in
exchange.

"Come, don't take on so, funny one! I'll manage for you to-morrow if
you cannot find a place." Her quiet persuasive whispering sounded in
my ears as if it came through a dream...

There we lay till dawn...

And when the dawn came, we crept fro