.. It _must_ be!...
At any rate _he_ didn't know. And he didn't know either that she might
not have proved his idealism right after all. Ah! to your cynic there's
nothing more maddening! Do you think your cynic loves his cynicism? Not
a bit of it! Not he! But he won't be taken in by sham any more. That he
swears....
"So it was with Semyonov. This girl might have proved the one real
exception; she might have lasted, she might have grown even more
beautiful and more wonderful, and so proved his idealism true after all.
He doesn't know, and I don't know. But there it is. He's haunted by the
possibility of it all his days. He's a man now ruled by an obsession. He
thinks of one thing and one thing only, day and night. His sensuality
has fallen away from him because women are dull--sterile to him beside
that perfect picture of the woman lost. Lost! he may recover her! He
doesn't know. The thought of death obsesses him. What is there in it? Is
she behind there or no? Is she behind there, maddening thought, with her
Englishman?
"He must know. He _must_ know. He calls to her--she won't come to him.
What is he to do? Suicide? No, to a proud man like Semyonov that's a
miserable confession of weakness.
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