“I don’t want to be late this time, because I’ve been late so often before....  It always is that way with me... always unfortunate....”

We started across, and when we stepped into the shining silver surface we all stopped for an instant, as though held by an invisible force.

“That’s it,” said Vera, speaking it seemed to herself.  “So it always is with us.  All revolutions in Russia end this way—­”

An unmounted Cossack came forward to us.

“No hanging about there,” he said.  “Cross quickly.  No one is to delay.”

We moved to the other side of the Moika bridge.  I thought of the Cossacks yesterday who had assured the people that they would not fire—­well, that impulse had passed.  Protopopoff and his men had triumphed.

We were all now in the shallows on the other bank of the canal.  The prostitute, who was still at our side, hesitated for a moment, as though she were going to speak.  I think she wanted to ask whether she might walk with us a little way.  Suddenly she vanished without sound, into the black shadows.

“Come along,” said Vera.  “We shall be dreadfully late.”  She seemed to be mastered by an overpowering desire not to be left alone with Lawrence.  She hurried forward with Nina, and Lawrence and I came more slowly behind.  We were now in a labyrinth of little streets and black overhanging flats.  Not a soul anywhere—­only the moonlight in great broad flashes of light—­once or twice a woman hurried by keeping in the shadow.  Sometimes, at the far end of the street, we saw the shining, naked Nevski.

Lawrence was silent, then, just as we were turning into the square where the Michailovsky Theatre was he began: 

“What’s the matter?...  What’s the matter with her, Durward?  What have I done?”

“I don’t know that you’ve done anything,” I answered.

“But don’t you see?” he went on.  “She won’t speak to me.  She won’t look at me.  I won’t stand this long.  I tell you I won’t stand it long.  I’ll make her come off with me in spite of them all.  I’ll have her to myself.  I’ll make her happy, Durward, as she’s never been in all her life.  But I must have her....  I can’t live close to her like this, and yet never be with her.  Never alone, never alone.  Why is she behaving like this to me?”

He spoke really like a man in agony.  The words coming from him in little tortured sentences as though they were squeezed from him desperately, with pain at every breath that he drew.

“She’s afraid of herself, I expect, not of you.”  I put my hand on his sleeve.  “Lawrence,” I said, “go home.  Go back to England.  This is becoming too much for both of you.  Nothing can come of it, but unhappiness for everybody.”

“No!” he said.  “It’s too late for any of your Platonic advice, Durward.  I’m going to have her, even though the earth turns upside down.”

We went up the steps and into the theatre.  There was, of course, scarcely any one there.  The Michailovsky is not a large theatre, but the stalls looked extraordinarily desolate, every seat watching one with a kind of insolent wink as though, like the Nevski ten minutes before it said, “Well, now you humans are getting frightened, you’re all stopping away.  We’re coming back to our own!”