After that Lawrence shut up.  He would not say another word.  We walked for a long time in silence.  The evening was most beautiful.  A golden moon flung the snow into dazzling relief against the deep black of the palaces.  Across the Neva the line of towers and minarets and chimneys ran like a huge fissure in the golden, light from sky to sky.

“You said there was something you wanted to ask my advice about?”

I broke the silence.

He looked at me with his long slow considering stare.  He mumbled something; then, with a sudden gesture, he gripped my arm, and his heavy body quivering with the urgency of his words he said: 

“It’s Vera Markovitch....  I’d give my body and soul and spirit for her happiness and safety....  God forgive me, I’d give my country and my honour....  I ache and long for her, so that I’m afraid for my sanity.  I’ve never loved a woman, nor lusted for one, nor touched one in my whole life, Durward—­and now... and now...  I’ve gone right in.  I’ve spoken no word to any one; but I couldn’t stand my own silence....  Durward, you’ve got to help me!”

I walked on, seeing the golden light and the curving arc of snow and the little figures moving like dolls from light to shadow.  Lawrence!  I had never thought of him as an urgent lover; even now, although I could still feel his hand quivering on my arm, I could have laughed at the ludicrous incongruity of romance, and that stolid thick-set figure.  And at the same time I was afraid.  Lawrence in love was no boy on the threshold of life like Bohun... here was no trivial passion.  I realised even in that first astonished moment the trouble that might be in store for all of us.

“Look here, Lawrence!” I said at last.  “The first thing that you may as well realise is that it is hopeless.  Vera Michailovna has confided in me a good deal lately, and she is devoted to her husband, thinks of nothing else.  She’s simple, naive, with all her sense and wisdom....”

“Hopeless!” he interrupted, and he gave a kind of grim chuckle of derision.  “My dear Durward, what do you suppose I’m after?... rape and adultery and Markovitch after us with a pistol?  I tell you—­” and here he spoke fiercely, as though he were challenging the whole ice-bound world around us—­“that I want nothing but her happiness, her safety, her comfort!  Do you suppose that I’m such an ass as not to recognise the kind of thing that my loving her would lead to?  I tell you I’m after nothing for myself, and that not because I’m a fine unselfish character, but simply because the thing’s too big to let anything into it but herself.  She shall never know that I care twopence about her, but she’s got to be happy and she’s got to be safe....  Just now, she’s neither of those things, and that’s why I’ve spoken to you....  She’s unhappy and she’s afraid, and that’s got to change.  I wouldn’t have spoken of this to you if I thought you’d be so short-sighted....”