"When I married Nicholas," she said, "I thought of Nina more than any
one else. That was wrong.... I ought to have thought most of Nicholas;
but I knew that I could give her a home, that she could have everything
she wanted. And still she would be with me. Nicholas was only too ready
for that. I thought I would care for her until some one came who was
worthy of her, and who would look after her far better than I ever
could.

"But the only person who had come was Boris Grogoff. He loved Nina from
the first moment, in his own careless, conceited, opinionated way."

"Why did you let him come so often to the house if you didn't approve of
him?" I asked.

"How could I prevent it?" she asked me. "We Russians are not like the
English. In England I know you just shut the door and say, 'Not at
home.'

"Here if any one wanted to come he comes. Very often we hate him for
coming, but still there it is. It is too much trouble to turn him out,
besides it wouldn't be kind--and anyway they wouldn't go. You can be as
rude as you like here and nobody cares. For a long while Nina paid no
attention to Boris. She doesn't like him. She will never like him, I'm
sure. But now, these last weeks, I've begun to be afraid. In some way,
he has power over her--not much power, but a little--and she is so
young, so ignorant--she knows nothing.

"Until lately she always told me everything. Now she tells me nothing.
She's strange with me; angry for nothing. Then sorry and sweet
again--then suddenly angry.... She's excited and wild, going out all the
time, but unhappy too.... I _know_ she's unhappy. I can feel it as
though it were myself."

"You're imagining things," I said. "Now when the war's reached this
period we're all nervous and overstrung. The atmosphere of this town is
enough to make any one fancy that they see anything. Nina's all right."

"I'm losing her! I'm losing her!" Vera cried, suddenly stretching out
her hand as though in a gesture of appeal. "She must stay with me. I
don't know what's happening to her. Ah, and I'm so lonely without her!"

There was silence between us for a little, and then she went on.

"Durdles, I did wrong to marry Nicholas--wrong to Nina, wrong to
Nicholas, wrong to myself, I thought it was right. I didn't love
Nicholas--I never loved him and I never pretended to. He knew that I did
not. But I thought then that I was above love, that knowledge was what
mattered. Ideas--saving the world--and he had _suc