had touched his, when his mouth had been, so
close to hers that their very thoughts had mingled, when she had felt
the stuff of his coat, and even for an instant stroked it. He _must_
have noticed these things, and still he had never rebuffed her. He was
always so kind to her; she fancied that his voice had a special note of
tenderness in it when he spoke to her, and when she looked at his ugly,
quiet, solid face, she could not believe that they were not meant for
one another. He _must_ want her, her gaiety, happiness, youth--it would
be wrong for him _not_ to! There could be no girls in that stupid,
practical, far-away England who would be the wife to him that she would
be.

Then the cursed misery of that waiting! They could hear in their
sitting-room the steps coming up the stone stairs outside their flat,
and every step seemed to be his. Ah, he had come earlier than he had
fixed. Vera had stupidly forgotten, perhaps, or he had found waiting any
longer impossible. Yes, surely that was his footfall; she knew it so
well. There, now he was turning towards the door; there was a pause;
soon there would be the tinkle of the bell!...

No, he had mounted higher; it was not Lawrence--only some stupid,
ridiculous creature who was impertinently daring to put her into this
misery of disappointment. And then she would wonder suddenly whether she
had been looking too fixedly at the door, whether they had noticed her,
and she would start and look about her self-consciously, blushing a
little, her eyes hot and suspicious.

I can see her in all these moods; it was her babyhood that was leaving
her at last. She was never to be quite so spontaneously gay again,
never quite so careless, so audacious, so casual, so happy. In Russia
the awkward age is very short, very dramatic, often enough very tragic.
Nina was as helpless as the rest of the world.

At any rate, upon this Sunday, she was sure of her afternoon. Her eyes
were wild with excitement. Any one who looked at her closely must have
noticed her strangeness, but they were all discussing the events of the
last two days; there were a thousand stories, nearly all of them false
and a few; true facts.

No one in reality knew anything except that there had been some
demonstrations, a little shooting, and a number of excited speeches. The
town on that lovely winter morning seemed absolutely quiet.

Somewhere about mid-day Semyonov came in, and without thinking about it
Nina suddenly