“Nina, dear... don’t....  You know that it isn’t so.  You can go where you please, do what you please.”

“Thank you,” said Nina, tossing her head.  “I’m glad to hear it.”

“I know I’m tiresome very often.  I’m slow and stupid.  If I try you sometimes you must forgive me and be patient....  Sit down again and let’s be happy.  You know how I love you.  Nina, darling... come again.”

But Nina stood there pouting.  She was loving Vera so intensely that it was all that she could do to hold herself back, but her very love made her want to hurt....  “It’s all very well to say you love me, but you don’t act as though you do.  You’re always trying to keep me in.  I want to be free.  And Andrey Stepanovitch....”

They both paused at Lawrence’s name.  They knew that that was at the root of the matter between them, that it had been so for a long time, and that any other pretence would be false.

“You know I love him—­” said Nina, “and I’m going to marry him.”

I can see then Vera taking a tremendous pull upon herself as though she suddenly saw in front of her a gulf into whose depths, in another moment, she would fall.  But my vision of the story, from this point, is Nina’s.

Vera told me no more until she came to the final adventure of the evening.  This part of the scene then is witnessed with Nina’s eyes, and I can only fill in details which, from my knowledge of them both, I believe to have occurred.  Nina, knew, of course, what the effect of her announcement would be upon Vera, but she had not expected the sudden thin pallor which stole like a film over her sister’s face, the withdrawal, the silence.  She was frightened, so she went on recklessly.  “Oh, I know that he doesn’t care for me yet....  I can see that of course.  But he will.  He must.  He’s seen nothing of me yet.  But I am stronger than he, I can make him do as I wish.  I will make him.  You don’t want me to marry him and I know why.”

She flung that out as a challenge, tossing her head scornfully, but nevertheless watching with frightened eyes her sister’s face.  Suddenly Vera spoke, and it was in a voice so stern that it was to Nina a new voice, as though she had suddenly to deal with some new figure whom she had never seen before.

“I can’t discuss that with you, Nina.  You can’t marry because, as you say, he doesn’t care for you—­in that way.  Also if he did it would be a very unhappy marriage.  You would soon despise him.  He is not clever in the way that you want a man to be clever.  You’d think him slow and dull after a month with him....  And then he ought to beat you and he wouldn’t.  He’d be kind to you and then you’d be ruined.  I can see now that I’ve always been too kind to you—­indeed, every one has—­and the result is, that you’re spoilt and know nothing about life at all—­or men.  You are right.  I’ve treated you as a child too long.  I will do so no longer.”

Nina turned like a little fury, standing back from Vera as though she were going to spring upon her.  “That’s it, is it?” she cried.  “And all because you want to keep him for yourself.  I understand.  I have eyes.  You love him.  You are hoping for an intrigue with him....  You love him!  You love him!  You love him!... and he doesn’t love you and you are so miserable....”