killed in a railway accident coming up from Odessa when Nina was very
small, and since then Nina's been mine--all mine!"

She said that word with sudden passion, flinging it at me with a fierce
gesture of her hands. "Do you know what it is to want that something
should belong to you, belong entirely to you, and to no one else? I've
been too proud to say, but I've wanted that terribly all my life. I
haven't had children, although I prayed for them, and perhaps now it is
as well. But Nina! She's known she was mine, and, until now, she's loved
to know it. But now she's escaping from me, and she knows that too, and
is ashamed. I think I could bear anything but that sense that she
herself has that she's being wrong--I hate her to be ashamed."

"Perhaps," I suggested, "it's time that she went out into the world now
and worked. There are a thousand things that a woman can do."

"No--not Nina. I've spoilt her, perhaps; I don't know. I always liked to
feel that she needed my help. I didn't want to make her too
self-reliant. That was wrong of me, and I shall be punished for it."

"Speak to her," I said. "She loves you so much that one word from you to
her will be enough."

"No," Vera Michailovna said slowly. "It won't be enough now. A year ago,
yes. But now she's escaping as fast as she can."

"Perhaps she's in love with some one," I suggested.

"No. I should have seen at once if it had been that. I would rather it
were that. I think she would come back to me then. No, I suppose that