s there are devils,' and we admire and
fear quiet men because they have something that we have not. And I
like the way that you watch us, Durward. Your friend Trenchard does
not watch us at all and one could be his friend. For you one has quite
another feeling. It is as though I had something to give you that you
really want. Why should I not give it you? My giving it will do me no
harm, it may even yield me pleasure. You will not throw it away. You
are an Englishman and will not for a moment's temper or passion reveal
secrets. And there are no secrets. What I tell you you may tell the
world--but I warn you that it will neither interest them nor will they
believe it.... There is, you see, no climax to my story. I have no
story, indeed; like an old feldscher in my village who hates our
village Pope. 'Why, Georg Georgevitch,' I say, 'do you hate him? He is
a worthy man.' 'Your Honour,' he says, 'there is nothing there; a fat
man, but God has the rest of him--I hate him for his emptiness.' I'm
in a humour to talk. I have, in a way, fulfilled the purpose that my
English tutor created in me. I've grown a sort of quiet skin, you
know, but under that skin the heart pounds away, the veins swell to
bursting. I'm a fool behind it all--just a fool as every Russian is a
fool with more in hand than he knows how to deal with. You don't
understand Russia, do you? No, and I don't and no one does. But we can
all talk about her--and love her too, if you like, although our
sentiment's a bad thing in us, some say. But for us not to talk--for
one of us to be silent--do you know how hard that is?... And through
it all how I despise myself for wishing to tell them! What business is
it of theirs? Then this war. Can you conceive what it is doing to
Russians? If you have loved Russia and dreamed for her and had your
dreams flung again and again to the ground and trampled on--and now,
once more, the bubbles are in the sky, glittering, gleaming ... do we
not have to speak, do you think? Must it not be hard, when before we
have not been able to be silent about women and vodka, to be silent
now about the dearest wish of our heart? We have come out here, all of
us, to see what we will find. I have come because I want to get nearer
to something--I had brought something in my heart about which I had
learnt to be silent. 'That is enough!' I thought, 'there can be
nothing else about which I can wish to talk; but now, suddenly, like
that crucifix on the hi