be taken from the rich and given to the poor, the peasants should have all the land, and the rulers of the world be beheaded.  He had no knowledge of other countries, although he talked very freely of what he called his “International Principles.”  I could not respect him as I could many Russian revolutionaries, because he had never on any occasion put himself out or suffered any inconvenience for his principles, living as he did, comfortably, with all the food and clothes that he needed.  At the same time he was, on the other hand, kindly and warm-hearted, and professed friendship for me, although he despised what he called my “Capitalistic tendencies.”  Had he only known, he was far richer and more autocratic than I!

In the midst of this company Henry Bohun was rather shy and uncomfortable.  He was suspicious always that they would laugh at his Russian (what mattered it if they did?), and he was distressed by the noise and boisterous friendliness of every one.  I could not help smiling to myself as I watched him.  He was learning very fast.  He would not tell any one now that “he really thought that he did understand Russia,” nor would he offer to put his friends right about Russian characteristics and behaviour.  He watched the young giggling girls, and the fat Rozanov, and the shrill young man with ill-concealed distress.  Very far these from the Lizas and Natachas of his literary imagination—­and yet not so far either, had he only known.

He pinned all his faith, as I could see, to Vera Michailovna, who did gloriously fulfil his self-instituted standards.  And yet he did not know her at all!  He was to suffer pain there too.

At dinner he was unfortunately seated between one of the giggling girls and a very deaf old lady who was the great-aunt of Nina and Vera.  This old lady trembled like an aspen leaf, and was continually dropping beneath the table a little black bag that she carried.  She could make nothing of Bohun’s Russian, even if she heard it, and was under the impression that he was a Frenchman.  She began a long quivering story about Paris to which she had once been, how she had lost herself, and how a delightful Frenchman had put her on her right path again....  “A chivalrous people, your countrymen".... she repeated, nodding her head so that her long silver earrings rattled again—­“gay and chivalrous!” Bohun was not, I am afraid, as chivalrous as he might have been, because he knew that the girl on his other side was laughing at his attempts to explain that he was not a Frenchman.  “Stupid old woman!” he said to me afterwards.  “She dropped her bag under the table at least twenty times!”