Fran Assa: I have written an article that attempts to explain what Jansy rightly noted as the "intense sadness and cloudy forebodings" that permeate the entire short story of "Spring in Fialta" and her perception that the moodiness "points to the narrator's own sense of loss to his doomed intimations of supreme, thwarted, love." 
Attached please find "Remorse and Nabokov's Women." The article will appear in the forthcoming Women in Nabokov's Life, eds. Garipova and Torres. I look forward to any comments readers may have.  Thank you. 

Jansy Mello: Congratulations, Fran, on the forthcoming publication of  “Remorse and Nabokov’s Women.” I followed with interest the connections you established between four VN characters in “Spring in Fialta”, “The Gift” and “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight” (the two Ninas, Clare, Zina) and his more famous two great loves. The rich quotes obtained from Brian’s VN biography and Stacy Schiff’s “Véra”, from the recent edition of V. Nabokov’s love letters, together with his other letters were finely woven within the article and provided an informative and fluent reading about how an author’s anguished remorse could have gained form in his works of fiction, without dissolving the needed aura of mystery still associated to how VN envisaged women. Thank you for the opportunity to read your article.