powder were placed in position and the matches were lit as the last of the French rode out. The Cossacks galloped up in time to put the matches out at the risk of their lives. On our way home we passed by St. Saviour’s church and looked in, really impelled to seek refuge from the cold. In a side chapel where the light was dim, a priest, with his long hair and beard and fine features, was preaching to a congregation which sat fervently absorbed. The heads of the women looked Eastern in their shawl swathings. I listened for some time to the strange musical tongue, of which I could not understand a word. The priest looked so amazingly like the traditional pictures of Christ that I felt I was listening to the great Master teaching in the Temple. OCTOBER 4TH. When I came down to breakfast at 10 my strange Counter-Revolutionary was sitting in the hall. How he ever got there or why he came as I had not telephoned to him, I shall never understand. I expressed my astonishment and told him I was sorry I could not go out with him, as I had someone coming to see me. I promised to telephone to him later. He seemed a little disappointed, said he was “_entièrement a mon service_,” and departed. In the dining-room I found Michael breakfasting and told him, and he got up quickly to see, but I laughed and said that naturally I had sent him away, before telling anyone he was there. Michael looked at me with a cold look. He is like the others, one feels instinctively that however much they may like one as a woman, they would sacrifice one in a minute if it were necessary for the cause. At lunch time H. G. Wells arrived from Petrograd with his son; they are lodged in our house. It was a great pleasure to find an old friend and to be able to talk of things and people familiar to us. He was, as usual, laughing and extremely humorous about the condition of life in Petrograd. On his account we were a big party for lunch, and there was an effort to make a spread, but this was frustrated by Michael Borodin. When I asked for some of the beautiful apple cake I had seen on the side-table, Michael made grimaces at me: he had sent it back to the kitchen. The perfect Communist in him revolted against the inequality of H. G. having a special cake, considering that neither Vanderlip nor Sheridan had had one on arrival. The household call me Sheridan, like a man. One has quite lost the habit of prefixing Mr. or Mrs., in fact one cannot do it, it sounds so absurd and affected. I have not yet been honoured to the extent of being called Tovarisch (Comrade), but some people ball me Clara Moretonovna (Clare, daughter of Moreton). After lunch I went for a walk with Michael; he had tip-toed out of the room at lunch time, and I asked him why. He was not very communicative, and said that he hated people collectively and he disliked H. G., though for no reason that I could make out. I sat up far into the night. One felt quite sleepless with excitement over the evening’s discussions.