How happy a thing freedom is—and how lonely!
She told me many things that I need not repeat here, but, as she talked, I saw how, far more deeply than I had imagined, Nina had been the heart of the whole of her life. She had watched over her, protected her, advised her, warned her, and loved her, passionately, jealously, almost madly all the time.
“When I married Nicholas,” she said, “I thought of Nina more than any one else. That was wrong.... I ought to have thought most of Nicholas; but I knew that I could give her a home, that she could have everything she wanted. And still she would be with me. Nicholas was only too ready for that. I thought I would care for her until some one came who was worthy of her, and who would look after her far better than I ever could.
“But the only person who had come was Boris Grogoff. He loved Nina from the first moment, in his own careless, conceited, opinionated way.”
“Why did you let him come so often to the house if you didn’t approve of him?” I asked.
“How could I prevent it?” she asked me. “We Russians are not like the English. In England I know you just shut the door and say, ‘Not at home.’
“Here if any one wanted to come he comes. Very often we hate him for coming, but still there it is. It is too much trouble to turn him out, besides it wouldn’t be kind—and anyway they wouldn’t go. You can be as rude as you like here and nobody cares. For a long while Nina paid no attention to Boris. She doesn’t like him. She will never like him, I’m sure. But now, these last weeks, I’ve begun to be afraid. In some way, he has power over her—not much power, but a little—and she is so young, so ignorant—she knows nothing.
“Until lately she always told me everything. Now she tells me nothing. She’s strange with me; angry for nothing. Then sorry and sweet again—then suddenly angry.... She’s excited and wild, going out all the time, but unhappy too.... I know she’s unhappy. I can feel it as though it were myself.”
“You’re imagining things,” I said. “Now when the war’s reached this period we’re all nervous and overstrung. The atmosphere of this town is enough to make any one fancy that they see anything. Nina’s all right.”
“I’m losing her! I’m losing her!” Vera cried, suddenly stretching out her hand as though in a gesture of appeal. “She must stay with me. I don’t know what’s happening to her. Ah, and I’m so lonely without her!”