Ballet Rehearsal

Ballet RehearsalAbsintheThe Broken Column
now I no longer thought myself Grand Tutor, he was finally able to imagine I was. My other Tutees, those I'd seen and heard of who had inclined to Bray and doubted me, appeared to have reversed their attitudes in view of the flunkèd state I'd led them to, or led them to see, and doubted now the one who'd called them passed. Their problem, as some saw and others didn't, was complex: if Bray's Certifications were false, how reconcile his Certifying me for having declared them so? And if I was true, how assimilate my self-flunkage and late defense of Bray? Only Max was untroubled by the conundrum: "All the better it don't make sense," he would say to Leonid, My chill Ladyship, or Peter Greene, who sometimes now visited. "So it's a mystery, you shouldn't analyze."
He was become my best apologist, if not my best Tutee. For though Anastasia wept and protested my new counsel, especially regarding her connection with Bray, it was not long before Stoker told me (with a wink, as in former times) that the two conditions of my release might soon be reduced to one: he'd observed his wife against