ow
queer it was that the same woman should have cared for both of us. And
I know that, although I did not hate him at all, I would give almost
anything for him not to have been there, never to have been there.
Whilst he was there I knew that I had no chance. Marie had not laughed
at me during those days at Petrograd; she had believed in me then and
I had been worth believing in. If people had believed in me more I
might be a very different man now.

I was almost asleep, scarcely conscious of the room, when suddenly I
heard a voice cry, "Marie! Marie! Marie!" three times. It was a voice
that I had never heard before, strong but also tender, full of pain,
with a note in it too of a struggling self-control that would break in
a moment and overwhelm its possessor. As I look back at it I remember
that I felt the passion and strength in it so violently that I seemed
to shrink into myself, as though I were witnessing something that no
man should see, and as though also I were conscious of my own
weakness and insignificance.

It was Semyonov. The flashlight flashed into the room, shining for an
instant upon him. He was sitting up in bed, his shirt open and his
chest bare. His eyes were fixed upon the window, but he was fast
asleep. He seemed to me a new man. I had grown so accustomed to his
sarcasm, his irony, that I had almost persuaded myself that he had
never truly loved Marie, but had felt some sensual attraction for her
that would, by realisation, have been at once satisfied. This was
another man. Here was a struggle, an agony that was not for such men
as I.

He cried again, "Marie! Marie!" then got up out of bed, walked on his
naked feet in his shirt to the window, stood there and waited. The
moonlight had, by this, struck our room and flooded it. He turned
suddenly and faced me. I could not believe that he did not see me, but
I could not endure the unhappiness in his eyes and I turned, looking
down. I did not look at him again but I heard his feet patter back to
the bed; then he stood there, his whole body strung to meet some
overmastering crisis. He whispered her name as though she had come to
him since his first call. "Ah, Marie, my darling," he whispered.

I could not bear that. I crept from my bed, slipped away, closed the
door softly behind me and stole downstairs.

I cannot write at length of what followed. It was the crisis of
everything that has happened to me since I left Petrograd. Every
experience that