There was a samovar, and we had excellent tea with lemon in it, and some cold smoked salmon on thick slices of buttered bread. Kameneff and the two Comrades were too absorbed in their discussion to eat anything. One Comrade was telling something, Kameneff took notes, and our host, a small nervous man, rolled bread pellets. Madame, in an even voice, plied me with questions: “When did you leave London?” “How long did you take from Stockholm to Reval? Oh, dear, a day and a half late! We have no news here, tell me some.” “Is Comrade Kameneff really _chassé_ from England?” “Is it true that Krassin will soon follow?” “What pretty hair you have, mademoiselle. Is it naturally that colour? Does it curl naturally so?” “Is there a famine in England? I hear there is no longer sugar or butter? But there will be a famine when your strike begins?” “What, you have not a macintosh with you?” “Nor an umbrella?” “Nor thicker shoes than that?” “But do you not know there is nothing to be had in Russia?” “You have goloshes? That is good.” “And soap? Yes, they will do your washing if you give them soap to do it with----” Kameneff left us to attend a meeting elsewhere. It was now pretty late, and I was tired; the room was small, and full of smoke and food. When I had finished my tea, Alexandre Kameneff and the soldier who had not left us since our arrival, took me back to the headquarters. I did not know what was to become of me, and no one understood me. The dimly-lit corridors were crowded with strange loungers. I was shown into a grim room where portraits of Lenin and Trotsky adorned the walls, and there I sat silently among people I could not talk with. After awhile, to my intense relief, Kameneff appeared. In this strange _milieu_ in which I was so utterly lost, Kameneff seemed to me the oldest and the only friend I had in the world, and I metaphorically clung to him as a drowning man to a straw. Somebody in the crowd, taking pity on my helplessness, or else wondering what I was asking for in three unknown languages, had sent him to me. He asked what on earth I was doing there. As if I knew! I followed him to another room, bigger and fuller of people, who all looked very serious and sat in a circle. The meeting went on, and I sat obscurely in a corner wondering whether, if I understood Russian, I should be allowed to be there. At last, bored by watching them and learning nothing from it, I got out a pencil and paper from the hand-case I had with me and wrote a letter to Dick. It was the last place from which I could post a letter and the last time I could write letters uncensored. I wrote to Dick from my heart, thinking of him at that moment in bed, so very far away, looking so round and pink, and with one arm outside the bedclothes. In spirit I was kneeling by his bedside and kissing the little bare arm. Dick and Margaret both know that when I am away from them I come in spirit in the night, and they