to deal with it here, describing it as far as possible from
her point of view and placing her in the centre of the picture.

The great fact about Nina, at the end, when everything has been said,
must always be her youth. That Russian youthfulness is something that no
Western people can ever know, because no Western people are accustomed,
from their very babyhood, to bathe in an atmosphere that deals only with
ideas.

In no Russian family is the attempt to prevent children from knowing
what life really is maintained for long; the spontaneous impetuosity of
the parents breaks it down. Nevertheless the Russian boy and girl, when
they come to the awkward age, have not the least idea of what life
really is. Dear me, no! They possess simply a bundle of incoherent
ideas, untested, ill-digested, but a wonderful basis for incessant
conversation. Experience comes, of course, and for the most part it is
unhappy experience.

Life is a tragedy to every Russian simply because the daily round is
forgotten by him in his pursuit of an ultimate meaning. We in the West
have learnt to despise ultimate meanings as unpractical and rather
priggish things.

Nina had thought so much and tested so little. She loved so vehemently
that her betrayal was the more inevitable. For instance, she did not
love Boris Grogoff in the least, but he was in some way connected with
the idea of freedom. She was, I am afraid, beginning to love Lawrence
desperately--the first love of her life--and he too was connected with
the idea of freedom because he was English. We English do not understand
sufficiently how the Russians love us for our easy victory over tyranny,
and despise us for the small use we have made of our victory--and then,
after all, there is something to be said for tyranny too....

But Nina did not see why she should not capture Lawrence. She felt her
vitality, her health, her dominant will beat so strongly within her that
it seemed to her that nothing could stop her. She loved him for his
strength, his silence, his good-nature, yes, and his stupidity. This
last gave her a sense of power over him, and of motherly tenderness too.
She loved his stiff and halting Russian--it was as though he were but
ten years old.

I am convinced, too, that she did not consider that she was doing any
wrong to Vera. In the first place she was not as yet really sure that
Vera cared for him. Vera, who had been to her always a mother rather
than a sister, seemed a