From that moment she feared her uncle as much as she hated him.  Long afterwards came his influence over Nicholas.  No one had so much influence over Nicholas as he.  Nicholas himself admitted it.  He was alternately charmed and frightened, beguiled and disgusted, attracted and repulsed.  Before the war Semyonov had, for a time, seen a good deal of them, and Nicholas steadily degenerated.  Then Semyonov was bored with it all and went off after other game more worthy of his doughty spear.  Then came the war, and Vera devoutedly hoped that her dear uncle would meet his death at the hands of some patriotic Austrian.  He did indeed for a time disappear from their lives, and it seemed that he might never come back again.  Then on that fateful Christmas Day he did return, and Vera’s worst fears were realised.  She hated him all the more because of her impotence.  She could do nothing against him at all.  She was never very subtle in her dealings with people, and her own natural honesty made her often stupid about men’s motives.  But the thing for which she feared her uncle most was his, as it seemed to her, supernatural penetration into the thoughts of others.

She of course greatly exaggerated his gifts in that direction simply because they were in no way her gifts, and he, equally of course, discovered very early in their acquaintance that this was the way to impress her.  He played tricks with her exactly as a conjurer produces a rabbit out of a hat....

When he announced his intention of coming to live in the flat she was literally paralyzed with fright.  Had it been any one else she would have fought, but in her uncle’s drawing gradually nearer and nearer to the centre of all their lives, coming as it seemed to her so silently and mysteriously, without obvious motive, and yet with so stealthy a plan, against this man she could do nothing....

Nevertheless she determined to fight for Nicholas to the last—­to fight for Nicholas, to bring back Nina, these were now the two great aims of her life; and whilst they were being realised her love for Lawrence must be passive, passive as a deep passionate flame beats with unwavering force in the heart of the lamp....

They had made me promise long before that I would spend Easter Eve with them and go with them to our church on the Quay.  I wondered now whether all the troubles of the last weeks would not negative that invitation, and I had privately determined that if I did not hear from them again I would slip off with Lawrence somewhere.  But on Good Friday Markovitch, meeting me in the Morskaia, reminded me that I was coming.