“It is the same thing,” she said. “Comradeship—love—service together—understanding. That would be good to have.”
“The best things in life,” said Bertram. “The only things worth living for.”
“You think so too? Well, then it is a promise between us?”
“A hope,” he said.
She told him she must be going back, and held out her gloved hand. It was wet with the snow, when he put it to his lips.
“You are very kind,” she said.
She turned from him, and in a moment was lost to him in the whirl of snowflakes.
“Extraordinary!” said Bertram to himself, aloud, as he groped his way across the Arbat Square in the direction of the Kremlin’s great walls. He felt less lonely, though he was alone in Moscow.
“It is the same thing,” she had said, “comradeship—love—service together—understanding.”
Comradeship. Well, even without love, it would be good. He needed it enormously, from a woman, as well as from Christy. Why from a woman? Why had Janet Welford’s comradeship been so much better than any man’s? Perhaps women understood better, with more tenderness for the weakness of men. Or was it just the lure of sex? Impossible to tell. Why bother to find out? Why not accept life without analysis, as simply as Nadia’s offer of love? It was the second time he had been offered woman’s love since Joyce had gone from him. The pretty German girl had wanted to go with him, and he had laughed at her, and played the prig. Was he always to refuse the chance of human affection, woman’s tenderness, his spiritual and physical hunger for such companionship? A voice whispered in his ear, “Loyalty to Joyce! . . . Loyalty! . . . Loyalty!”