It was only after my visit that I was told
that this quiet woman was the passion of Andrey Vassilievitch's life.
He had been over thirty when he had married her; she had been married
before, had been treated, I was informed, with great brutality by her
husband who had left her. She had then divorced him. Praise of her, I
discovered, was universal. She was apparently a woman who created love
in others, but this by no marked virtues or cleverness; no one said of
her that she was "brilliant," "charming," "fascinating." People spoke
of her as though here at least there was some one of whom they were
sure, some one too who made them the characters they wished to be,
some one finally who had not surrendered herself, who gave them her
love but not her whole soul, keeping always mystery enough to maintain
her independence. No scandal was connected with her name. I heard of
Nikitin and others as her friends, and that was all. Then, quite
suddenly, two months before the beginning of the war, she died.
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