“That year was a very wonderful one for me. We took a flat together, and life seemed to be realised quite completely for me. This, I thought, was what I had always desired ... and I grew slack and fat and lazy—outside my business—I always worked at that decently. Early in the next year we had a boy. Anna took him with the same happy indifference that she had taken me: she loved him, I know, but she was outside us all, speculating about impossibilities, then suddenly coming to earth and startling one with her reality. I loved her and I loved Moscow—although sometimes too I hated it—but we used also to have the most awful quarrels; I was angry with her, I remember, because I thought that she would never take me seriously, and she would laugh at me for wanting her to. I felt that Russia was doing me no good. Our boy died, quite suddenly, of pneumonia, and then I begged her to marry me and come and live in England. How she laughed at the idea! She didn’t want to be married to anyone. But she thought that perhaps England would be better for me. She did not seem to mind at all if I went. That piqued me, and I stayed on, trying to make myself essential to her. I did not care for her then so much as for my idea of myself, that she would break her heart if I went. But she knew that—how she would laugh as she looked at me.... She refused to take me seriously. Russia was doing me harm—I got slack, sleepy, indifferent. I longed for England. The chance came. Anna said that she was glad for me to go, and laughed as she said it. I took my chance.... I’ve told you everything,” he suddenly ended. He waited. The tune across the water went: ‘La-la-la, la, la-la-la-la, la, la.’ Many, many little black figures were turning on the fish-market. The blaze of the bonfire was low and its reflection in the sea smoking red. When he had finished Katherine had very gently drawn her hand away from his, then suddenly, with a little fierce gesture, pushed it back again. “What was your boy’s name?” she asked, very quietly. “Paul.” “Poor little boy. Did you care for him very much?” “Yes, terribly.” “It must have been dreadful his dying.” He felt then a sudden dismay and fear. Perhaps, after all she was going to dismiss him; he fancied that she was retreating from him—he felt already that she was farther away from him than she had ever been, and, with a desperate urgency, his voice trembling, his hand pressing her arm, he said: “Katie—Katie—You’re disgusted with me. I can feel it. But you must go on loving me—you _must_, you _must_. I don’t care for anything but that. All men have had affairs with women. It’s all dead with me, as though it had been another man. There’s no one in the world but you. I—I—” His hand shook; his eyes, if she could have seen them, were strained with terror. She turned to him, put her arms round his neck, drew his head towards her, kissed him on his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks.