overb:
"In each man's heart there is a secret town at whose altars the true
prayers are offered!" Even perhaps with Alexei it is so, only there you
must go very deep, and there is no time.

But I must tell you about Vera. She told me so kindly that he was going
to England, and that now her whole life would be led in Nina and myself.
I held her hand very close in mine and asked her, Was it really true
that she loved him. And she said, yes she did, but that that she could
not help. She said that she had spoken with him, and that they had
decided that it would be best for him to go away. Then she begged my
forgiveness for many things, because she had been harsh or cross,--I
don't know what things.... Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, _she_ to beg
forgiveness of _me!_

But I held her hand closer and closer, because I knew that it was the
last time that I would be able so truly to hold it. How could she not
see that now everything was over--everything--quite everything! Am I one
to hold her, to chain her down, to keep her when she has already
escaped? Is that the way to prove my fidelity to her?

Of course I did not speak to her of this, but for the first time in all
our years together, I felt older than her and wiser. But of course
Alexei saw it. How he heard I do not know, but that same day he came to
me and he seemed to be very kind.

I don't know what he said, but he explained that Vera would always be
unhappy now, always, longing and waiting and hoping.... "Keep him here
in Russia!" he whispered to me. "She will get tired of him then--they
will tire of one another; but if you send him away...." Oh! he is a
devil, Ivan Andreievitch, and why has he persecuted me so? What have I
ever done to him? Nothing... but for weeks now he has pursued me and
destroyed my inventions, and flung Russia in my face and made Nina, dear
Nina, laugh at me, and now, when the other things are finished, he shows
me that Vera will be unhappy so long as I am alive. What have I ever
done, Ivan Andreievitch? I am so unimportant, why has he taken such a
trouble? To-day I gave him his last chance... or last night... it is
four in the morning now, and the bells are already ringing for the early
Mass. I said to him:

"Will you go away? Leave us all for ever? Will you promise never to
return?"

He said in that dreadful quiet sure way of his: "No, I will never go
away until you make me."

Vera hates him. I cannot leave her alone with him, can I? I (here the