s 'Victor,' and as she died I felt as though, at last,
after that long waiting, she had leapt into my arms for ever....

"After her death for many weeks, she was with me more completely than
she had been during her lifetime. I knew that she was dead, but I
thought that I also had died. I went into Finland alone, saw no one,
talked to no one, saw only her. Then quite suddenly I came to life
again. She withdrew from me.... Work seemed the only possible thing;
but I was, during all this time, happy not miserable. She was not with
me, but she was not very far away. Then Andrey Vassilievitch came back
to me. He told me that he knew that she had loved me--that he had
tried to speak of her to others who had known her, but they had, none
of them, had real knowledge of her. Might he speak to me sometimes
about her?

"I found that though he irritated me more than ever I liked to talk
about her to him. As I spoke of her he scarcely was present at all and
yet he had known her and loved her, and would listen for ever and ever
if I wished.

"When the war had lasted some months the fancy came to me that I could
get nearer to her by going into it. I might even die, which would be
best of all. I did not wish to kill myself because I felt that to be a
coward's death, and in such a way I thought that I would only separate
myself from her. But in the war, perhaps, I might meet death in such a
way as to show him that I despised him both for myself and her. By
suicide I would be paying him reverence.... Some such thought also had
Andrey Vassilievitch. I heard that he thought of attaching himself to
some Red Cross Otriad. I told him my plans. He said no more, but
suddenly, as you know, I found him on the platform of the Warsaw
station. Afterwards he apologised to me, said that he must be near me,
that he would try not to annoy me, that if sometimes he spoke of her
to me he hoped that I would not mind.... And I? What do I feel? I do
not know. He has some share in her that I have not. I have some share
in her that he has not, and I think that it has come to both of us
that the one of us who dies first will attain her. It seems to me now
that she is continually with me, but I believe that this is nothing to
the knowledge I shall have of her one day. Am I right? Is Andrey
Vassilievitch right? Can it be that such a man--such men, I should
say, as either I or he--will ever be given such happiness? I do not
know. I only know that God exists--that