er
surrender, which was, indeed, the proudest moment of her whole life.
She never looked back for one second after that embrace, she never
doubted herself or him or the supreme importance of love itself; but the
rest of her--her tenderness, her fidelity, her loyalty, her
self-respect--this was all tortured now by the things that she seemed
compelled to do. It must have appeared to her as though Fate, having
watched that complete abandonment, intended to deprive her of everything
upon which she had depended. She was, I think, a woman of very simple
instincts. The things that had been in her life--her love for Nina, her
maternal tenderness for Nicholas, her sense of duty--remained with her
as strongly after that tremendous Thursday afternoon as they had been
before it. She did not see why they need be changed. She did not love
Nina any the less because she loved Lawrence; indeed, she had never
loved Nina so intensely as on the night when she had realised her love
for Lawrence to the full, that night when they had sheltered the
policeman. And she had never pretended to love Nicholas. She had always
told him that she did not love him. She had been absolutely honest with
him always, and he had often said to her, "If ever real love comes into
your life, Vera, you will leave me," and she had always answered him,
"No, Nicholas, why should I? I will never change. Why should I?"

She honestly thought that her love for Lawrence need not alter things.
She would tell Nicholas, of course, and then she would act as he wished.
If she were not to see Lawrence she would not see him--that would make
no difference to her love for him. What she did not realise--and that
was strange after living with him for so long--was that he was always
hoping that her tender kindliness towards him would, one day, change
into something more passionate. I think that, subconsciously, she did
realise it, and that was why she was, during those weeks before the
Revolution, so often uneasy and unhappy. But I am sure that definitely
she never admitted it.

The great fact was that, as soon as possible, she must tell Nicholas
all about it. And the days went by, and she did not. She did not, partly
because she had now some one else as well as herself to consider. I
believe that in those weeks between that Thursday and Easter Day she
never had one moment alone with Lawrence. He came, as Bohun had told me,
to see them; he sat there and looked at her, and listened an