The audience consisted of working people, who had admission free through the distribution of tickets to certain unions. They were a motley crowd, chiefly _en blouse_. In the Royal box, reserved for Commissars and their wives, there was a man with a cloth cap. The women were eating apples. In the box next to ours there was an old woman with a shawl over her head. It was intensely moving to see the absorbed attention of the audience. People leaned their elbows on the ledges of the boxes and watched the ballet with an almost devouring interest. There was not a cough nor a whisper. Only when Coppelia came to life as the mechanical doll, there were delicious low ripples of controlled laughter from the children. At the ends of the acts people left the stalls to rush, not for the exits to the foyer, but to the front of the gangways nearest the stage to see the dancers close to, and to applaud them. The people were tired people, who had worked all day and had earned a good evening and were enjoying it to the full. My only contretemps was with a little stenographer from the Foreign Office who was in our box. She observed that I had on the red enamelled star of Communism, and that I wore white gloves. One, she said, contradicted the other; the white gloves were bourgeois. I argued that it only mattered what was in my heart, and not what was on my hands. But she would not be pacified, so I removed the gloves. Considering that my costume was a red tweed skirt with a red, wool jersey and a tight-fitting cap, I had thought that gloves would not make me over-dressed. If my evening’s pleasure was neutralised by the concentrated aroma which arose from the great unwashed, it is only fair to observe that there is no soap in the country, and most people have, for two years or so, only had the one suit of clothes in which they stand up. No wonder----! In the car coming home I met Mr. Rothstein, who is living in the same house. I wished I could recall the abusive article which I read about him in an English newspaper, but all I remember is that he is not to be readmitted to England. He seems to be an energetic and forceful little man. I expect he is pretty clever. We had supper together after the theatre, and conversation [Illustration: SERGE TROTSKY AND ALEXANDRE KAMENEFF. _p. 67._] drifted on to that eternal comedy, the Nationalisation of women. I happened to say that this had done more to harm the Bolshevik cause than almost anything, and, moreover, that quite serious people still believed it. Mr. Rothstein interposed rather sharply, “Well, a little select circle which reads the _Morning Post_ perhaps believes it.” Is it possible, I wonder that he is right, and that the “little select circle” do not count as much as I have all my life taken for granted that they did? SEPTEMBER 23RD.