imid of soul, playing always for safety, taking the easiest
way with all emotion, treading always the known road, accepting day by
day the creed that was given to him; he would be, outside his brain,
of a poor intelligence, accepting the things of art on the standard of
popular applause, talking with a stupid garrulity about matters of
which he had no first-hand knowledge--proud of his position as a man
of the world, wise in the character and moods of men of which, in
reality, he knew nothing. Had he been an Englishman or a German, this
would have been all and yet, because he was a Russian, this was not
even the beginning of the matter.

I had, as I have already said, in earlier days known him only
slightly. I had once stayed for three days in his country-house and it
was here that I had met his wife. Russian houses are open to all the
world and, with such a man as Andrey Vassilievitch, through the doors
crowds of men and women are always coming and going, treating their
host like the platform of a railway station, eating his meals,
sleeping on his beds, making rendezvous with their friends, and yet
almost, on their departure, forgetting his very name.

My visit had been of a date now some five years old. I can only
remember that his wife did not make any very definite impression upon
me, a little quiet woman, of a short figure, with kind, rather sleepy
eyes, a soft voice, and the air of one who knows her housewifely
business to perfection and has joy in her knowledge. "Not
interesting," I would have judged her, but I had during my stay no
personal talk with her. It was only after my visit that I was told
that this quiet woman was the passion of Andrey Vassilievitch's life.
He had been over thirty when he had married her; she had been married
before, had been treated, I was informed, with great brutality by her
husband who had left her. She had then divorced him. Praise of her, I
discovered, was universal. She was apparently a woman who created love
in others, but this by no marked virtues or cleverness; no one said of
her that she was "brilliant," "charming," "fascinating." People spoke
of her as though here at least there was some one of whom they were
sure, some one too who made them the characters they wished to be,
some one finally who had not surrendered herself, who gave them her
love but not her whole soul, keeping always mystery enough to maintain
her independence. No scandal was connected with her name. I hea