I can't make him go. I will only do what
you wish. Vera, please, please--"
Then, with her back still turned to me, I heard her say,
"Please, go. I didn't mean--I didn't... but go now... and come
back--later."
I waited a minute, and then, miserable, terrified of the future, I went.
IV
Next night (it was Friday evening) Semyonov paid me a visit. I was just
dropping to sleep in my chair. I had been reading that story of De la
Mare's _The Return_--one of the most beautiful books in our language,
whether for its spirit, its prose, or its poetry--and something of the
moon-lit colour of its pages had crept into my soul, so that the
material world was spun into threads of the finest silk behind which
other worlds were more and more plainly visible. I had not drawn my
blind, and a wonderful moon shone clear on to the bare boards of my
room, bringing with its rays the mother-of-pearl reflections of the
limitless ice, and these floated on my wall in trembling waves of opaque
light. In the middle of this splendour I dropped slowly into slumber,
the book falling from my hands, and I, on my part, seeming to float
lazily backwards and forwards, as though, truly, one were at the bottom
of some crystal sea, idly and happily drowned.
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