“We’ll have to consider what we must do. I don’t know. I can’t think to-night.... And you, Alexei, you leave me alone....”
He went stumbling away towards his bedroom.
Vera said nothing to any of us. She got up slowly, looked about her for a moment as though she were bewildered by the light and then went after Nicholas. I turned to Semyonov.
“You’d better go back to your own place,” I said.
“Not yet, thank you,” he answered, smiling.
IX
On the afternoon of Easter Monday I was reminded by Bohun of an engagement that I had made some weeks before to go that evening to a party at the house of a rich merchant, Rozanov by name. I have, I think, mentioned him earlier in this book. I cannot conceive why I had ever made the promise, and in the afternoon, meeting Bohun at Watkins’ bookshop in the Morskaia, I told him that I couldn’t go.
“Oh, come along!” he said. “It’s your duty.”
“Why my duty?”
“They’re all talking as hard as they can about saving the world by turning the other cheek, and so on; and a few practical facts about Germany from you will do a world of good.”