y the
fire.

"But even Vera did not seem to care for Russia as Russia. 'What can
Siberia be to me?' she would say. 'Why, Nicholas, it is no more than
China.'

"But it was more than China; when I looked at it on the map I recognised
it as though it were my own country. Then the war came and I thought the
desire of my heart was fulfilled. At last men talked about Russia as
though she truly existed. For a moment all Russia was united, all
classes, rich and poor, high and low. Men were patriotic together as
though one heart beat through all the land. But only for a moment.
Divisions came, and quickly things were worse than before. There came
Tannenburg and afterwards Warsaw.

"All was lost.... Russia was betrayed, and I was a sentimental fool. You
know yourself how cynical even the most sentimental Russians are--that
is because if you stick to facts you know where you are, but ideas are
always betraying you. Life simply isn't long enough to test them, that's
all, and man is certainly not a patient animal.

"At first I watched the war going from bad to worse, and then I shut
myself in and refused to look any longer. I thought only of Vera and my
work. I would make a great discovery and be rich, and then Vera at last
would love me. Idiot! As though I had not known that Vera would not love
for that kind of reason.... I determined that I would think no more of
Russia, that I would be a man of no country. Then during those last
weeks before the Revolution I began to be suspicious of Vera and to
watch her. I did things of which I was ashamed, and then I despised
myself for being ashamed.

"I am a man, I can do what I wish. Even though I am imprisoned I am
free.... I am my own master. But all the same, to be a spy is a mean
thing, Ivan Andreievitch. You Englishmen, although you are stupid, you
are not mean. It was that day when your young friend, Bohun, found me
looking in your room for letters, that in spite of myself I was ashamed.

"He looked at me in a sort of way as though, down to his very soul he
was astonished at what I had done. Well, why should I mind that he
should be astonished? He was very young and all wrong in his ideas of
life. Nevertheless that look of his influenced me. I thought about it
afterwards. Then came Alexei Petrovitch. I've told you already. He was
always hinting at something. He was always there as though he were
waiting for something to happen. He hinted things about Vera. It's
strange, Ivan A