‘Very likely my silences appeared to him sympathetic. Goodness only knows. All the month of September our regiment quartered in villages had an easy time. It was then that I heard most of that—you can’t call it a story. The story I have in my mind is not in that. Outpourings, let us call them.

‘I would sit, quite content to hold my peace, a whole hour perhaps, while Tomassov talked with exaltation. And when he was done I would still hold my peace. And there would be produced a solemn effect of silence which, I imagine, pleased Tomassov in a way.

‘She was of course not a woman in her first youth. A widow maybe. At any rate I have never heard Tomassov mention a husband. She had a salon.^* Something very distinguished. A social centre in which that admirable lady queened it with great splendour.

‘Somehow, I fancy her court was composed mostly of men. But Tomassov, I must say, kept such details out of his discourses wonderfully well. Upon my word, I don’t know whether her hair was dark or fair, her eyes brown, black or blue, what was her stature, her features or her complexion. His love soared above mere physical impressions. He never described her to me in set terms.

‘But he was ready to swear that in her presence, everybody’s thoughts and feelings were bound to circle round her. She was that sort of woman. Conversations on all sorts of subjects went on in her salon. Most wonderful conversations, but through them all there flowed like an unheard, mysterious, strain of music the assertion, the power, the tyranny of sheer beauty. So, apparently, she was beautiful. It detached all these talking people from their life-interests, and even from their vanities. She was a secret delight and a secret torment. Even the old men when they looked at her seemed to brood, as if struck by the thought that their lives had been wasted. She was the very joy and shudder of felicity and she brought only sadness and torment to the hearts of men.

‘In short, she must have been an extraordinary woman or else Tomassov was an extraordinary young fellow to feel in that way and talk like this about her. I told you the fellow had some poetry in him. And observe that all this sounded true enough. It would be just about the effect a woman very much out of the common would produce, you know. Poets do get close to the truth, somehow; there’s no denying that.

‘There’s no poetry in my composition, I know; but I have my share of common shrewdness, and I have no doubt that the lady was kind to the youngster, once he did find his way inside her salon. His getting in is the real marvel for me. However he did get in, the innocent, and he found himself in distinguished company there, amongst men of considerable position. And you know what that means: thick waists, bald heads, teeth that are not—as some poet puts it. Imagine amongst them a nice boy, fresh and simple like an apple just off the tree. A modest, good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian. My word! What a change! What a relief for jaded feelings. And with that a dose of poetry in his nature too, which saves even a simpleton from being a fool.

‘He became an artlessly, unconditionally devoted slave. He was rewarded by being smiled on kindly, and in time admitted to the intimacy of the house. It may be that the unsophisticated barbarian amused the exquisite lady. Perhaps—since he didn’t feed on tallow candles—he satisfied some need of tenderness in the woman? You know there are many kinds of tenderness highly civilized women are capable of. Women with heads and imaginations, I mean, and no temperament to speak of; you understand. But who’s going to fathom their needs or their fancies. Most of the time they themselves don’t know much about their innermost moods and blunder out of one into another, sometimes with catastrophic results. And then who’s more surprised than they? However Tomassov’s case was in its nature quite idyllic. The fashionable world was amused. It made for him a kind of social success. But he didn’t care. There was one divinity and there was the shrine where he was permitted to go in and out without regard for official reception-hours.

‘He took advantage of that privilege freely. Well, he had no official duties you know. The military mission^* was supposed to be more complimentary than anything else—the head of it being a personal friend of