The most difficult thing for me will be to fix the moment and the cause of our _differences_[D]. It was not a _difference_, but a gradual _going-away_ of Leo Nikolaevich from everything in his former life, and thus the harmony of all our happy previous life was broken.
Of all this I will try to write briefly, after having thought it over as well and as accurately as I can.
Accept the assurance of my respect and devotion for you,
YASNAYA POLYANA, STATION ZASSYEKA, 21 AUGUST, 1913.
MUCH-RESPECTED SEMEN AFANASEVICH: This is a difficult task which you have set me, writing my autobiography, and, although I have already begun it, I am continually wondering whether I am doing it properly. The chief thing which I have decided to ask you is to tell me what length my article should be. If, for instance, you take a page of the magazine _Vyestnik Europa_ as a measure, how many full pages, approximately, ought I to write? To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine years old, a long life; well, _what_ out of that life would be of interest to people? I have been trying to find some woman's autobiography for a model, but have not found one anywhere.
Pardon me for troubling you; I want to do the work you have charged me with as well as possible, but I have so little capacity and no experience at all.
It may be supposed that Vengerov again came to the assistance of S. A. T. and solved her doubts, after which she went on with her work and finished it at the end of October, 1913. Being in Petersburg, she personally handed it over to Vengerov.[E] The work did not satisfy Vengerov, as he did not find in it what, evidently, particularly interested him, namely, information as to the life in Yasnaya Polyana during the time when _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karenina_ were written. Vengerov wrote to S. A. T. about this, urging her to fill up the gap, to write a new additional chapter. S. A. T. did this. She sent the new material to Vengerov accompanied by the following letter:
YASNAYA POLYANA, STATION ZASSYEKA, 24 MARCH, 1914.
MUCH-RESPECTED SEMEN AFANASEVICH: You are perfectly right in your observation that I left a great gap in my autobiography, and I thank you very much for advising me to write one more chapter; I have now done so. But the question is, have I done it well, and is the new material suitable? Hard as I tried, and carefully as I searched for materials for that chapter, I found very little, but I have made the best use of it which I could.