I took her hand.

“I’m proud,” I said, “now and always.”

“Do you know that I’ve never asked any one’s help before?  I was rather conceited that I could get on always without it.  When I was very small I wouldn’t take a word of advice from any one, and mother and father, when I was tiny, used to consult me about everything.  Then they were killed and I had to go on alone....  And after that, when I married Nicholas, it was I again who decided everything.  And my mistakes taught me nothing.  I didn’t want them to teach me.”

She spoke that last word fiercely, and through the note that came into her voice I saw suddenly the potentialities that were in her, the other creature that she might be if she were ever awakened.

She talked then for a long time.  She didn’t move at all; her head rested on her hand and her eyes watched me.  As I listened I thought of my other friend Marie, who now was dead, and how restless she was when she spoke, moving about the room, stopping to demand my approval, protesting against my criticism, laughing, crying out....  Vera was so still, so wise, too, in comparison with Marie, braver too—­and yet the same heart, the same charity, the same nobility.

But she was my friend, and Marie I had loved....  The difference in that!  And how much easier now to help than it had been then, simply because one’s own soul was one’s own and one stood by oneself!

How happy a thing freedom is—­and how lonely!

She told me many things that I need not repeat here, but, as she talked, I saw how, far more deeply than I had imagined, Nina had been the heart of the whole of her life.  She had watched over her, protected her, advised her, warned her, and loved her, passionately, jealously, almost madly all the time.

“When I married Nicholas,” she said, “I thought of Nina more than any one else.  That was wrong....  I ought to have thought most of Nicholas; but I knew that I could give her a home, that she could have everything she wanted.  And still she would be with me.  Nicholas was only too ready for that.  I thought I would care for her until some one came who was worthy of her, and who would look after her far better than I ever could.

“But the only person who had come was Boris Grogoff.  He loved Nina from the first moment, in his own careless, conceited, opinionated way.”

“Why did you let him come so often to the house if you didn’t approve of him?” I asked.

“How could I prevent it?” she asked me.  “We Russians are not like the English.  In England I know you just shut the door and say, ’Not at home.’

“Here if any one wanted to come he comes.  Very often we hate him for coming, but still there it is.  It is too much trouble to turn him out, besides it wouldn’t be kind—­and anyway they wouldn’t go.  You can be as rude as you like here and nobody cares.  For a long while Nina paid no attention to Boris.  She doesn’t like him.  She will never like him, I’m sure.  But now, these last weeks, I’ve begun to be afraid.  In some way, he has power over her—­not much power, but a little—­and she is so young, so ignorant—­she knows nothing.