t Lawrence can look after himself," I insisted angrily.

Semyonov knew and Markovitch knew that I was speaking to Vera. No one
then said a word. There was a long pause. At last Semyonov saw fit to
go.

"I'm off to the Duma," he said. "There's a split, I believe. And I want
to hear whether it's true that the Czar's abdicated."

"I believe you'd rather he hadn't, Alexei Petrovitch," Markovitch broke
in fiercely.

He laughed at us all and said, "Whose interests am I studying? My
own?... Holy Russia's?... Yours?... When will you learn, Nicholas my
friend, that I am a spectator, not a participator?"

Vera was alone during most of that day; and even now, after the time
that has passed, I cannot bear to think of what she suffered. She
realised quite definitely and now, with no chance whatever of
self-deception, that she loved Lawrence with a force that no denial or
sacrifice on her part could alter. She told me afterwards that she
walked up and down that room for hours, telling herself again and again
that she must not go and see whether he were safe. She did not dare even
to leave the room. She felt that if she entered her bedroom the sight
of her hat and coat there would break down her resolution, that if she
went to the head of the stairs and listened she must then go farther and
then farther again. She knew quite well that to go to him now would mean
complete surrender. She had no illusions about that. The whole of her
body was quivering with desire for his embrace, for the warm strength of
his body, for the kindness in his eyes, and the compelling mastery of
his hands.

She had never loved a man before; but it seemed to her now that she had
known all these sensations always, and that she was now, at last, her
real self, and that the earlier Vera had been a ghost. And what ghosts
were Nina and Markovitch!

She told me afterwards that, on looking back, this seemed to her the
most horrible part of the horrible afternoon. These two, who had been
for so many years the very centre of her life, whom she had forced to
hold up, as it were, the whole foundation of her existence, now simply
were not real at all. She might call to them, and their voices were like
far echoes or the wind. She gazed at them, and the colours of the room
and the street seemed to shine through them.... She fought for their
reality. She forced herself to recall all the many things that they had
done together, Nina's little ways, the quarrels with Ni