And yet I knew that for me at any rate she was not outside them.

I felt as though at any moment she might enter the room.

We discussed her aloofness, her sudden happiness and her sudden distress, her intimacies and withdrawals, Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch slowly elaborating her into a high romantic figure.

Behind her, behind all our thoughts of her, there was the presence of Semyonov.

Nothing was stranger during our time here than the way that Semyonov had always kept us company.
Our consciousness of relief from him had begun it.