“Why all this attack on me?” I asked.  “What have I done?”

“You’ve done nothing,” she cried.  “We all love you, Durdles, because you’re such a baby, because you dream such dreams, see nothing as it is....  And perhaps after all you’re right—­your vision is as good as another.  But this time you’ve made me restless.  You’re never to see me as a noble woman again, Ivan Andreievitch.  See me as I am, just for five minutes!  I haven’t a drop of noble feeling in my soul!”

“You’ve just given him up,” I said.  “You’ve sent him back to England, although you adore him, because your duty’s with your husband.  You’re breaking your heart—­”

“Yes, I am breaking my heart,” she said quietly.  “I’m a dead woman without him.  And it’s my weakness, my cowardice, that is sending him away.  What would a French woman or an English woman have done?  Given up the world for their lover.  Given up a thousand Nicholases, sacrificed a hundred Ninas—­that’s real life.  That’s real, I tell you.  What feeling is there in my soul that counts for a moment beside my feeling for Sherry?  I say and I feel and I know that I would die for him, die with him, happily, gladly.  Those are no empty words.

“I who have never been in love before, I am devoured by it now until there is nothing left of me—­nothing....  And yet I remain.  It is our weakness, our national idleness.  I haven’t the strength to leave Nicholas.  I am soft, sentimental, about his unhappiness.  Pah! how I despise myself....  I am capable of living on here for years with husband and lover, going from one to another, weeping for both of them.  Already I am pleading with Sherry that he should remain here.  We will see what will happen.  We will see what will happen!  Ah, my contempt for myself!  Without bones, without energy, without character.

“But this is life, Ivan Andreievitch!  I stay here, I send him away because I cannot bear to see Nicholas suffer.  And I do not care for Nicholas.  Do you understand that?  I never loved him, and now I have a contempt for him—­in spite of myself.  Uncle Alexei has done that.  Oh yes!  He has made a fool of Nicholas for months, and although I have hated him for doing that, I have seen, also, what a fool Nicholas is!  But he is a hero, too.  Make him as noble as you like, Ivan Andreievitch.  You cannot colour it too high.  He is the real thing and I am the sham....  But oh!  I do not want to live with him any more, I am tired of him, his experiments, his lamentations, his weakness, his lack of humour—­tired of him, sick of him.  And yet I cannot leave him, because I am soft, soft without bones, like my country, Ivan Andreievitch....  My lover is strong.  Nothing can change his will.  He will go, will leave me, until he knows that I am free.  Then he will never leave me again.

“Perhaps I will get tired of his strength one day—­it may be—­just as now I am tired of Nicholas’s weakness.  Everything has its end.