"Oh, I hate him! I listen to nothing that he says. All the same,
Durdles, this passion for nobility on your part is very irritating. I
can see you now making up the most magnificent picture of my nobility.
I'm sure if you were ever to write a book about us all, you'd write of
me something like this: 'Vera Michailovna had won her victory. She had
achieved her destiny.... Having surrendered her lover she was as fine as
a Greek statue!' Something like that.... Oh, I can see you at it!"
"You don't understand--" I began.
"Oh, but I do!" she answered. "I've watched your attitude to me from the
first. You wanted to make poor Nina noble, and then Nicholas, and then,
because they wouldn't either of them do, you had to fall back upon me:
memories of that marvellous woman at the Front, Marie some one or other,
have stirred up your romantic soul until it's all whipped cream and
jam--mulberry jam, you know, so as to have the proper dark colour."
"Why all this attack on me?" I asked. "What have I done?"
"You've done nothing," she cried. "We all love you, Durdles, because
you're such a baby, because you dream such dreams, see nothing as it
is.
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