It seemed to begin like that, and do you know, Durward, as he talked I saw that patriotism was at the bottom of everything, that you could talk about Internationalism until you were blue in the face, and that it only began to mean anything when you’d learnt first what nationality was—­that you couldn’t really love all mankind until you’d first learnt to love one or two people close to you.  And that you couldn’t love the world as a vast democratic state until you’d learnt to love your own little bit of ground, your own fields, your own river, your own church tower.  Markovitch had it all as plain as plain.  ’Make your own house secure and beautiful.  Then it is ready to take its place in the general scheme.  We Russians always begin at the wrong end,’ he said.  ‘We jump all the intermediate stages.  I’m as bad as the rest.’  I know you’ll say I’m so easily impressed, Durward, but he was wonderful that night—­and so right.  So that as he talked I just longed to rush back and see that my village—­Topright in Wiltshire—­was safe and sound with the highgate at the end of the village street, and the village stores with the lollipop windows, and the green with the sheep on it, and the ruddy stream with the small trout and the high Down beyond....  Oh well, you know what I mean—­”

“I know,” said I.

“I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to.  If he couldn’t have Vera he’d have Russia, and if he couldn’t have Russia he’d have his inventions.  When we first came along a month or two ago he’d lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn’t very sure about his inventions.  A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him.  Then came the Revolution, and he thought that everything was saved.  Vera and Russia and everything.  Wasn’t he wonderful that week?  Like a child who has suddenly found Paradise....  Could any Englishman ever be cheated like that by anything?  Why a fellow would be locked up for a loony if he looked as happy as Markovitch looked that week.  It wouldn’t be decent....  Well, then....”  He paused dramatically.  “What’s happened to him since, Durward?”

“How do you mean?  What’s happened to him since?” I asked.

“I mean just what I say.  Something happened to him at the end of that week.  I can put my finger almost exactly on the day—­the Thursday of that week.  What was it?  That’s one of the things I’ve come to ask you about?”

“I don’t know.  I was ill,” I said.

“No, but has nobody told you anything?”

“I haven’t heard a word,” I said.

His face fell.  “I felt sure you’d help me?” he said.

“Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together,” I suggested.

“The rest is really Semyonov.  The queerest things have been happening.  Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one’s English ideas, isn’t it? and that’s so damned difficult.  It’s no use saying an English fellow wouldn’t do this or that.  Of course he wouldn’t....  Oh, they are queer!”