“Were you ever in love?”

“Of course.  But it’s all gone long ago.  It was like being hungry.  Only very fine hungry.  Exquisite hungry. . . .  And then being disgusted. . . .”

“He is in love with you.”

“What is love?” said Anna.  “He is grateful.  He is by nature grateful.”  She smiled a smile, like the smile of a pale Madonna who looks down on her bambino.

“And you love nothing?”

“I love Russia—­and being alone, being completely alone.  When I am dead perhaps I shall be alone.  Not even my own body will touch me then.”

Then she added, “But I shall be sorry when he goes.”

Afterwards Benham talked to Prothero alone.  “Your Anna,” he said, “is rather wonderful.  At first, I tell you now frankly I did not like her very much, I thought she looked ‘used,’ she drank vodka at lunch, she was gay, uneasily; she seemed a sham thing.  All that was prejudice.  She thinks; she’s generous, she’s fine.”

“She’s tragic,” said Prothero as though it was the same thing.

He spoke as though he noted an objection.  His next remark confirmed this impression.  “That’s why I can’t take her back to Cambridge,” he said.

“You see, Benham,” he went on, “she’s human.  She’s not really feminine.  I mean, she’s—­unsexed.  She isn’t fitted to be a wife or a mother any more.  We’ve talked about the possible life in England, very plainly.  I’ve explained what a household in Cambridge would mean. . . .  It doesn’t attract her. . . .  In a way she’s been let out from womanhood, forced out of womanhood, and I see now that when women are let out from womanhood there’s no putting them back.  I could give a lecture on Anna.  I see now that if women are going to be wives and mothers and homekeepers and ladies, they must be got ready for it from the beginning, sheltered, never really let out into the wild chances of life.  She has been.  Bitterly.  She’s really emancipated.  And it’s let her out into a sort of nothingness.  She’s no longer a woman, and she isn’t a man.  She ought to be able to go on her own—­like a man.  But I can’t take her back to Cambridge.  Even for her sake.”

His perplexed eyes regarded Benham.

“You won’t be happy in Cambridge—­alone,” said Benham.

“Oh, damnably not!  But what can I do?  I had at first some idea of coming to Moscow for good—­teaching.”

He paused.  “Impossible.  I’m worth nothing here.  I couldn’t have kept her.”

“Then what are you going to do, Billy?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, I tell you.  I live for the moment.  To-morrow we are going out into the country.”

“I don’t understand,” said Benham with a gesture of resignation.  “It seems to me that if a man and woman love each other—­well, they insist upon each other.  What is to happen to her if you leave her in Moscow?”

“Damnation!  Is there any need to ask that?”