enemy Englishwoman.” He would not listen to any words of appreciation, he smiled in his genial, kindly way: “Of course we were glad to receive you, and to have you among us, _une femme artiste_, what did it matter to us, your nationality, or your relations. There is only one thing, _que nous ne pouvons pas supporter_,” and for the first time in all the months I have known him, a hard look passed over his face, and he set his teeth: “The only thing we cannot stand _c’est l’espionage_,” and the way he said it gave me a shiver down my spine. It was only a passing shadow, and the next moment he was telling me that he really regarded me as a woman of courage for coming just on his word, adding that when he saw me on the departure platform “with two small handbags, I knew in that moment that you were not any ordinary woman!” We looked back on our London days and laughingly discussed the first sitting when he invited me to come to Moscow. I told him “I did not believe that you were serious when you asked me,” and he said, “neither did I believe you were serious when you accepted.” He then proceeded to outline for me exactly what the effect of my Moscow visit would have on my friends, on my family, in the Press, and on my career. His accuracy remains to be seen. NOVEMBER 6TH. Off at last--what a hectic day. Litvinoff telephoned to me in the morning from the Commissariat to say that my big wooden cases (my coffins I call them, they are the same shape) were going to be conveyed from my studio to the station, and that I need not concern myself about them. It was not until midday that I learnt for certain that Professor Lomonosoff was going to start to-night. In Russia one makes no plans, things happen when they happen! With a rashness that nearly proved reckless, I distributed my few belongings among my friends. To a lady doctor-friend of Andrev who had been nice to me, I left all my stockings, a box of soap, a skirt, a jersey and my cloth overcoat. To the maids in the house, my shoes and goloshes, workbag, jersey, fur-lined dressing jacket, pair of gloves, and hat. To Rothstein, as a parting gift, my hot-water bottle and medicine case. I started on my journey in the clothes I stood up in. The maids, to my intense embarrassment, kissed my hands and nearly wept. I nearly kissed them in return. I started off with Litvinoff, and Rothstein came to the front door to see the last of me. He overwhelmed me with compliments: “You have been a brick, you have played up splendidly, you have never complained.” I tried to explain that I hadn’t played up, and that I had not been anything except very happy. I might have added that living Communistically had proved to me that one must either love or hate the people one sees every day for any length of time. Hate may be tempered into dislike, and Love may be more appropriately termed friendship or affection, but it was certainly affection that I had grown to feel for Rothstein.