IV

Next night (it was Friday evening) Semyonov paid me a visit. I was just
dropping to sleep in my chair. I had been reading that story of De la
Mare's _The Return_--one of the most beautiful books in our language,
whether for its spirit, its prose, or its poetry--and something of the
moon-lit colour of its pages had crept into my soul, so that the
material world was spun into threads of the finest silk behind which
other worlds were more and more plainly visible. I had not drawn my
blind, and a wonderful moon shone clear on to the bare boards of my
room, bringing with its rays the mother-of-pearl reflections of the
limitless ice, and these floated on my wall in trembling waves of opaque
light. In the middle of this splendour I dropped slowly into slumber,
the book falling from my hands, and I, on my part, seeming to float
lazily backwards and forwards, as though, truly, one were at the bottom
of some crystal sea, idly and happily drowned.

From all of this I was roused by a sharp knock on my door, and I started
up, still bewildered and bemused, but saying to myself aloud, "There's
some one there! there's some one there!..." I stood for quite a while,
listening, on the middle of my shining floor, then the knock was almost
fiercely repeated. I opened the door and, to my surprise, found Semyonov
standing there. He came in, smiling, very polite of course.

"You'll forgive me, Ivan Andreievitch," he said. "This is terribly
unceremonious. But I had an urgent desire to see you, and you wouldn't
wish me, in the circumstances, to have waited."

"Please," I said. I went to the window and drew the blinds. I lit the
lamp. He took off his Shuba and we sat down. The room was very dim now,
and I could only see his mouth and square beard behind the lamp.

"I've no Samovar, I'm afraid," I said. "If I'd known you were coming I'd
have told her to have it ready. But it's too late now. She's gone to
bed."

"Nonsense," he said brusquely. "You know that I don't care about that.
Now we'll waste no time. Let us come straight to the point at once. I've
come to give you some advice, Ivan Andreievitch--very simple advice. Go
home to England." Before he had finished the sentence I had felt the
hostility in his voice; I knew that it was to be a fight between us, and
strangely, at once the self-distrust and cowardice from which I had been
suffering all those weeks left me. I felt warm and happy. I felt that
with Semyonov I knew how to deal