"Yes, that's good," she answered. "How you could have stayed so long--" She dropped into a chair, closed her eyes and lay back. "Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, but I'm tired!" She looked, lying there, white-faced, her eyelids like grey shadows, utterly exhausted. I waited in silence. After a time she opened her eyes and said, suddenly: "We all come and talk to you, don't we? I, Nina, Nicholas, Sherry (she meant Lawrence), even Uncle Alexei. I wonder why we do, because we never take your advice, you know.... Perhaps it's because you seem right outside everything." I coloured a little at that. "Did I hurt you?... I'm sorry. No, I don't know that I am. I don't mind now whether I hurt any one. You know that he's going back to England?" I nodded my head. "He told you himself?" "Yes," I said. She lay back in her chair and was silent for a long time. "You think I'm a noble woman, don't you. Oh yes, you do! I can see you just thirsting for my nobility. It's what Uncle Alexei always says about you, that you've learnt from Dostoieffsky how to be noble, and it's become a habit with you." "If you're going to believe--" I began angrily. "Oh, I hate him! I listen to nothing that he says. All the same, Durdles, this passion for nobility on your part is very irritating. I can see you now making up the most magnificent picture of my nobility. I'm sure if you were ever to write a book about us all, you'd write of me something like this: 'Vera Michailovna had won her victory. She had achieved her destiny.... Having surrendered her lover she was as fine as a Greek statue!' Something like that.... Oh, I can see you at it!" "You don't understand--" I began. "Oh, but I do!" she answered. "I've watched your attitude to me from the first. You wanted to make poor Nina noble, and then Nicholas, and then, because they wouldn't either of them do, you had to fall back upon me: memories of that marvellous woman at the Front, Marie some one or other, have stirred up your romantic soul until it's all whipped cream and jam--mulberry jam, you know, so as to have the proper dark colour." "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--"