xception; she might have lasted, she might have grown even more
beautiful and more wonderful, and so proved his idealism true after all.
He doesn't know, and I don't know. But there it is. He's haunted by the
possibility of it all his days. He's a man now ruled by an obsession. He
thinks of one thing and one thing only, day and night. His sensuality
has fallen away from him because women are dull--sterile to him beside
that perfect picture of the woman lost. Lost! he may recover her! He
doesn't know. The thought of death obsesses him. What is there in it? Is
she behind there or no? Is she behind there, maddening thought, with her
Englishman?

"He must know. He _must_ know. He calls to her--she won't come to him.
What is he to do? Suicide? No, to a proud man like Semyonov that's a
miserable confession of weakness. How they'd laugh at him, these other
despicable human beings, if he did that! He'd prove himself as weak as
they. No, that's not for him. What then?

"This is a fantastic world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it.
Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and
sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and
weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so
irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of
rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do
for himself! Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his
cynicism, the food for his conceit such a game would be to Semyonov. Is
this going to do it? Or this? Or this? Now I've got him far enough?
Another five minutes!... Think of the hairbreadth escapes, the check and
counter check, the sense, above all, that to a man like Semyonov is
almost everything, that he is master of human emotions, that he can
direct wretched, weak human beings whither he will.

"And the other--the weak, disappointed, excitable man--can't you see
that Semyonov has him close to his hand, that he has only to stretch a
finger--"

"Markovitch!" cried Bohun.

"Now you know," I said, "why you've got to stay on in that flat."

VI

I have said already, I think, that the instinctive motive of Vera's life
was her independent pride. Cling to that, and however the world might
rock and toss around her she could not be wrecked. Imagine, then, what
she must have suffered during the weeks that followed her surrender to
Lawrence. Not that for a moment she intended to go back on h