In its inception the whole affair is still
mysterious to me. Looking back from this distance of time I see that he
was engaged on one knightly adventure after another--first Vera, then
Markovitch, lastly Nina. The first I caught at the very beginning, the
second I may be said to have inspired, but to the third I was completely
blind. I was blind, I suppose, because, in the first place, Nina had,
from the beginning, laughed at Bohun, and in the second, she had been
entirely occupied with Lawrence.
Bohun's knight-errantry came upon her with, I am sure, as great a shock
of surprise as it did upon me. And yet, when you come to think of it, it
was the most natural thing. They were the only two of our party who had
any claim to real youth, and they were still so young that they could
believe in one ideal after another as quick as you can catch goldfish in
a bowl of water. Bohun would, of course, have indignantly denied that he
was out to help anybody, but that, nevertheless, was the direction in
which his character led him; and once Russia had stripped from him that
thin coat of self-satisfaction, he had nothing to do but mount his white
charger and enter the tournament.
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