I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back the way we had come. Once he said: "I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may be allowed to meet from time to time----" I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely: "Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case like this." The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only intended to meet here--to meet and quicken each other for a greater giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they encountered untellable pain. At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying that it was only a question of time when they should find peace. He said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought. "No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time." Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again--but a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His presence glorified me on the night of his coming--the summer before the war. "There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to each other. They have been lovers a long time." I asked him about the other pair. "The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered.