I saw Marie standing near the door. She looked just as
she always did, very kind though smiling.... Of course it was only the
candle. I must be careful not to encourage these fancies. But God! how
lonely I am to-night! I realise, I suppose, that there isn't one
single living soul in the world who cares whether I die to-night or
not--not one. Durward will remember me, perhaps. No one else. And
Marie would have cared. Yes, even married to Semyonov she would have
cared--and remembered. And I could always have cared for her, been her
friend, as she asked me. I'm pretty low to-night. If I could sleep....
Boof!... There goes the candle!

_Wednesday, August 4th_.... I am growing accustomed, I suppose, to
Semyonov's company. After all, his contempt for me is an old thing,
dating from the very first moment that he ever saw me. It has become
now a commonplace to both of us. He is very silent now compared with
the old days. There has been much work yesterday and to-day, but still
last night I could not sleep. I think that he also did not sleep and
we both lay there in the dark, thinking, I suppose, of the same thing.
I thought even of myself, my sense of humour has never been very
strong, but I can at any rate see that I am no very fine figure in
life, and that whether such a man as I live or die can be of no great
importance to any one or anything, but I do most truly desire not to
make more of the matter than is just. A man may have felt himself the
most insignificant and useless of human creatures all his days, but
face him with death and he becomes, by very force of the contrast,
something of a figure.

Here am I, deprived of the only thing in life that gave me joy or
pride. I should, after that deprivation, have slipped back, I suppose,
to my old life of hopeless uninterest and insignificance, but now here
the death of Marie Ivanovna has been no check at all. I half believe
now that one can do with life or death what one will. If I had known
that from the beginning what things I might have found! As it is, I
must simply make the best of it. Semyonov's contempt would once have
frightened the very life out of me, but after that night of his
arrival here it has been nothing compared with the excitement of our
relationship--the things that are keeping us together in spite of
ourselves and the strange changes, I do believe, that this situation
here is making in him. The loss of Marie Ivanovna would two months ago
perhaps have f