He thought of it the more seriously when he saw the agony Vera was in. She did not ask him to help her, and so he did nothing; but he watched her efforts, the letters that she wrote, the eagerness with which she ravished the post, her fruitless visits to Grogoff’s flat, her dejected misery over her failure. He began himself to form plans, not, I am convinced, from any especial affection for Nina, but simply because he had the soul of a knight, although, thank God, he didn’t know it. I expect, too, that he was pretty dissatisfied with his knight-errantries. His impassioned devotion to Vera had led to nothing at all, his enthusiasm for Russia had led to a most unsatisfactory Revolution, and his fatherly protection of Markovitch had inspired apparently nothing more fruitful than distrust. I would like to emphasise that it was in no way from any desire to interfere in other people’s affairs that young Bohun undertook these Quests. He had none of my own meddlesome quality. He had, I think, very little curiosity and no psychological self-satisfaction, but he had a kind heart, an adventurous spirit, and a hatred for the wrong and injustice which seemed just now to be creeping about the world; but all this, again thank God, was entirely subconscious. He knew nothing whatever about himself.
The thought of Nina worried him more and more. After he went to bed at night, he would hear her laugh and see her mocking smile and listen to her shrill imitations of his own absurdities. She had been the one happy person amongst them all, and now—! Well, he had seen enough of Boris Grogoff to know what sort of fellow he was. He came at last to the conclusion that, after a week or two she would be “sick to death of it,” and longing to get away, but then “her pride would keep her at it. She’d got a devil of a lot of pride.” He waited, then, for a while, and hoped, I suppose, that some of Vera’s appeals would succeed. They did not; and then it struck him that Vera was the very last person to whom Nina would yield—just because she wanted to yield to her most, which was pretty subtle of him and very near the truth.
No one else seemed to be making any very active efforts, and at last he decided that he must do something himself. He discovered Grogoff’s address, went to the Gagarinskaya and looked up at the flat, hung about a bit in the hope of seeing Nina. Then he did see her at Rozanov’s party, and this, although he said nothing to me about it at the time, had a tremendous effect on him. He thought she looked “awful.” All the joy had gone from her; she was years older, miserable, and defiant. He didn’t speak to her, but from that night he made up his mind. Rozanov’s party may be said to have been really the turning-point of his life. It was the night that he came out of his shell, grew up, faced the world—and it was the night that he discovered that he cared about Nina.
The vision of her poor little tired face, her “rather dirty white dress,” her “grown-up” hair, her timidity and her loneliness, never left him for a moment. All the time that I thought he was occupied only with the problem of Markovitch and Semyonov, he was much more deeply occupied with Nina. So unnaturally secretive can young men be!
At last he decided on a plan. He chose the Monday, the day of the Bourse meeting, because he fancied that Grogoff would be present at that and he might therefore catch Nina alone, and because he and his fellow-propagandists would be expected also at the meeting and he would therefore be free of his office earlier on that afternoon. He had no idea at all how he would get into the flat, but he thought that fortune would be certain to favour him. He always thought that.
Well, fortune did. He left the office and arrived in the Gagarinskaya about half-past five in the evening. He walked about a little, and then saw a bearded tall fellow drive up in an isvostchick. He recognised this man as Lenin, the soul of the anti-Government party, and a man who was afterwards to figure very prominently in Russia’s politics. This fellow argued very hotly with the isvostchick about his fare, then vanished through the double doors. Bohun followed him. Outside Grogoff’s flat Lenin waited and rang the bell. Bohun waited on the floor below; then, when he heard the door open, he noiselessly slipped up the stairs, and, as Lenin entered, followed behind him whilst the old servant’s back was turned helping Lenin with his coat. He found, as he had hoped, a crowd of cloaks and a shuba hanging beside the door in the dark corner of the wall. He crept behind these. He heard Lenin say to the servant that, after all, he would not take off his coat, as he was leaving again immediately. Then directly afterwards Grogoff came into the hall.
That was the moment of crisis. Did Grogoff go to the rack for his coat and all was over; a very unpleasant scene must follow—a ludicrous expulsion, a fling or two at the amiable
