“How can you tell?”
“Because he’s always saying things that make Nicholas angry, and we can’t see anything in them at all.... Uncle Alexei’s very clever.”
“Yes, he is,” I agreed. “But you haven’t told me why you were crying just now.”
She looked at me. She gave a little shiver. “Oh, you do look ill!... Everything’s going wrong together, isn’t it?”
And with that she suddenly left me, hurrying away from me, leaving me miserable and apprehensive of some great trouble in store for all of us.
IV
It is impossible to explain how disturbed I was by Nina’s news. Semyonov living in the flat! He must have some very strong reason for this, to leave his big comfortable flat for the pokiness of the Markovitches’!
And then that the Markovitches should have him! There were already inhabitants enough—Nicholas, Vera, Nina, Uncle Ivan, Bohun. Then the inconvenience and discomfort of Nicholas’s little hole as a bedroom! How Semyonov must loathe it!
From that moment the Markovitches’ flat became for me the centre of my drama. Looking back I could see now how all the growing development of the story had centred round those rooms. I did not of course know at this time of that final drama of the Thursday afternoon, but I knew of the adventure with the policeman, and it seemed to me that the flat was a cup into which the ingredients were being poured one after another until at last the preparation would be complete, and then....
Oh, but I cared for Nina and Vera and Nicholas—yes, and Jerry too! I wanted to see them happy and at peace before I left them—in especial Nicholas.