The Russians in those days seemed so tremendously concerned about the soul--an excellent thing, of course, but not what one talked of. Still, that first fortnight had been quite idyllic. He remembered one Sunday afternoon--queer how such a little thing could stay in the mind!--on the beach near Cap Martin flicking sand off his boots with his handkerchief and Varvara saying: “And then to your face again, Philip Philipovitch?” She was always saying things which made him feel uncomfortable. And in the little letter which Katrina wrote him a year later, with blue forget-me-nots all about the paper, she had reminded him of how he had blushed. Charming young girls--simple--no such nowadays! The dew was off. They had thought Monte Carlo a vulgar place. What would they think of it now, by Jove! Even Rostakov only went there on the quiet--a _viveur_ that fellow, who would always be living a double life. Trevillian recollected how, under the spell of that idyllic atmosphere, and afraid of Varvara’s eyes, he himself had put off from day to day his visit to the celebrated haunt, until one evening when Madame Rostakov had _migraine_ and the girls were at a party he had sauntered to the station and embarked on a Monte Carlo train. How clearly it came back to him--the winding path up through the Gardens, a beautiful still evening, scented and warm, the Casino orchestra playing the Love music from ‘Faust,’ the one opera that he knew well. The darkness, strange with exotic foliage, glimmering with golden lamps--none of this glaring white electric light--had deeply impressed him, who, for all his youthful dandyism, had Puritanism in his blood and training. It was like going up to--well, not precisely heaven. And in his white beard old Trevillian uttered a slight cackle. Anyway, he had entered ‘the rooms’ with a beating heart. He had no money to throw away in those days; by Jove, no! His father had kept him strictly to an allowance of four hundred a year, and his partnership was still in the apprentice stage. He had only some ten or twenty pounds to spare. But to go back to England and have his fellows say, “What? Monte Carlo, and never played?” was not to be thought of.