gh English eyes has no excuse except that it _is_
English. That is its only interest, its only atmosphere, its only
motive, and if you are going to tell me that any aspect of Russia
psychological, mystical, practical, or commercial seen through an
English medium is either Russia as she really is or Russia as Russians
see her, I say to you, without hesitation, that you don't know of what
you are talking.

Of Russia and the Russians I know nothing, but of the effect upon myself
and my ideas of life that Russia and the Russians have made during these
last three years I know something. You are perfectly free to say that
neither myself nor my ideas of life are of the slightest importance to
any one. To that I would say that any one's ideas about life are of
importance and that any one's ideas about Russian life are of
interest... and beyond that, I have simply been compelled to write. I
have not been able to help myself, and all the faults and any virtues in
this story come from that. The facts are true, the inferences absolutely
my own, so that you may reject them at any moment and substitute others.
It is true that I have known Vera Michailovna, Nina, Alexei Petrovitch,
Henry, Jerry, and the rest--some of them intimately--and many of the
conversations here recorded I have myself heard. Nevertheless the
inferences are my own, and I think there is no Russian who, were he to
read this book, would not say that those inferences were wrong. In an
earlier record, to which this is in some ways a sequel,[1] my inferences
were, almost without exception, wrong, and there is no Russian alive for
whom this book can have any kind of value except as a happy example of
the mistakes that the Englishman can make about the Russian.

But it is over those very mistakes that the two souls, Russian and
English, so different, so similar, so friendly, so hostile, may meet....
And in any case the thing has been too strong for me. I have no other
defence. For one's interest in life is stronger, God knows how much
stronger, than one's discretion, and one's love of life than one's
wisdom, and one's curiosity in life than one's ability to record it. At
least, as I have said, I have endeavoured to keep my own history, my own
desires, my own temperament out of this, as much as is humanly
possible....

And the facts are true.

[Footnote 1: _The Dark Forest_.]

II

They had been travelling for a week, and had quite definitely decided
that they