And then, at last, the Mariino hotel; I went up to the second floor, where on the landing there were several people, all wearing white shirts, and between them — Alexey Maximovich [Maxim Gorky]. He was smiling, but I could feel him watching me closely, and the small staircase, only about fifteen steps, seemed much longer to me. And the closer I came to the landing, the more uncomfortable and uneasy I felt, but when I reached it, he embraced me with his long arms, and I felt his tears on my cheek… I was deeply touched by it. The man who wrote me such emotional and exciting letters, the person quite exceptional not only because of his outstanding life or his brilliance, but also the enormous influence he had on others; I had been drawn to him from my early years, and now he literally drew me to himself.

In 1928, Maxim Gorky came to the Soviet Union from Sorrento. In one of his letters to me, he promised to call on me, and indeed he came to Alushta, but no one could tell him exactly where my dacha was, so he had to go to Yalta, where he and I met, which I described in ‘My Acquaintance and Correspondence with Maxim Gorky’.