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But carried away with the story, she claimed in her memoirs that the key moment in their romance took place after she played Ophelia to his Hamlet in the Moscow Art Theatre for a charity performance. Her version includes everyone, including Stanislavsky and Aunt Olya, congratulating her on her performance after the curtain. An emotional Misha then pulls her into the wings and kisses her passionately. Although the circumstances are unlikely, she was so innocent of the facts of life that she may well have thought, as she claims, that she would have a child if such a man kissed her.
    ‘But now you must marry me,’ she told him.
    ‘What could be better?’ he laughed.
    Misha and Olga, whatever the exact details surrounding their decision to get married, undoubtedly acted on the spur of the moment without telling anyone. They knew that if they did ask for permission, it would be refused on the grounds of Olga’s age and Misha’s circumstances, and she would be taken home to Tsarskoe Selo immediately.
    So early one morning in September 1914, soon after the outbreak of war, Olga packed a small suitcase with her passport, wash-bag and a new nightdress and slipped out of Aunt Olya’s apartment on Prechistensky bulvar without being seen. It must have taken considerable courage, even when carried away by romantic fever. She took a drozhky to join Misha and together they drove to a small Orthodox church at the other end of Moscow. Misha, saying that they did not have much time, handed their passports to the priest, a very old man with a wrinkled face. The priest clearly did not want to be hurried and kept shaking his head in disapproval. The bride and groom each grasped a flickering candle, and two bystanders, engaged by Misha, held the crowns over their heads. The fact that Olga was a Lutheran does not appear to have been a problem. By Orthodox standards it certainly seems to have been a simple, short ceremony. Even so, Olga claimed later that Misha was constantly looking at his pocket watch, afraid of being late for that afternoon’s performance.
    For Olga, the enormity of what they had just done sank in only after they had returned to Misha’s apartment. They sat down to drink some tea from the samovar in his bedroom. The bed was so small that she wondered where she was supposed to sleep. Although the apartment had appeared large to Sergei Chekhov, it must have seemed very small to Olga, brought up in the houses at Tiflis and Tsarskoe Selo. And they had to share it with Misha’s old wet nurse as well as her mother-in-law. The atmosphere must have been unbearably oppressive. Next door, Natalya lay prostrate in her darkened bedroom. She had collapsed in shock and grief at discovering that her beloved son had married without telling her. That afternoon, even the egocentric Misha must have realized ‘that he could not go to work at the theatre on the day of his wedding, leaving together these two irreconcilable women in his life.
    Aunt Olya found out a few hours later. One of the actors at the Moscow Art Theatre came up and congratulated her. She asked why.
    ‘Oh, but your nephew has got married,’ he said to her.
    ‘Which nephew?’ she asked.
    ‘Mikhail Aleksandrovich.’
    ‘Who’s he married?’
    ‘Your niece, Olga Konstantinovna.’
    Distraught, she went straight home to Prechistensky bulvar. Olga wasn’t there, so she rushed round to Misha’s apartment. Olga herself opened the door. Aunt Olya fainted on the landing and Misha had to carry her into the apartment. Volodya, the defeated rival who turned up soon afterwards, described the situation in a letter to his mother: ‘You can’t imagine what a scene it was. [Aunt Olya] wanted to give Mishka a beating, then she changed her mind. She started to faint, she sobbed. In another room [Olga] was in hysterics. In the third one Natalya Aleksandrovna was lying unconscious. The scandal was grandiose and is still going on. I can’t imagine how it is going to end. Aunt Olya