"Very soon," I answered. I little knew that I should never see either of
them again.
III
I awoke that night with a sudden panic that I must instantly see Vera.
I, even in the way that one does when, one is only half awake, struggled
out of bed and felt for my clothes. Then I remembered and climbed back
again, but sleep would not return to me. The self-criticism and
self-distrust that were always attacking me and paralysing my action
sprang upon me now and gripped me. What was I to do? How was I to act? I
saw Vera and Nina and Lawrence and, behind them, smiling at me,
Semyonov. They were asking for my help, but they were, in some strange,
intangible way, most desperately remote. When I read now in our papers
shrill criticisms on our officials, our Cabinet, our generals, our
propagandists, our merchants, for their failure to deal adequately with
Russia, I say: Deal adequately? First you must catch your bird... and
no Western snare has ever caught the Russian bird of paradise, and I
dare prophesy that no Western snare ever will. Had I not broken my
heart in the pursuit, and was I not as far as ever from attainment? The
secret of the mystery of life is the isolation that separates every man
from his fellow--the secret of dissatisfaction too; and the only purpose
in life is to realise that isolation, and to love one's fellow-man
because of it, and to show one's own courage, like a flag to which the
other travellers may wave their answer; but we Westerners have at least
the waiting comfort of our discipline, of our materialism, of our
indifference to ideas.
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