Of course the brothers and husbands of our hostesses were also there, circulating from group to group and introducing the guests to each other. And to me the most humorous note of the whole afternoon was given when the husband of one of our hostesses' a middle-aged gentleman, very-serious and very widely learned--confided to me that for him entertainments and social functions of this kind were terrible bores but that he had to go through with them just to please his wife. Husbands are the same all over the world!... As I did not contradict him he took me in the quietest corner we could find and we had a long and interesting talk on subjects which took us far away from our surroundings. Nevertheless I could not help but agree entirely with my wife when she told us, on our return to Emirghian, that she had found the whole thing “somewhat too stiff,” and I believe Madame Ismet Bey was also of our opinion and felt that we were sincere when we told her that we much preferred her own small at-homes and the unpretentious little parties to which she had taken us on the previous days. I must say that we met most interesting and charming people at all these small parties. It is of course easier to get to know people when you meet them a few at a time than when you meet them in a big gathering. Madame Ismet Bey's friends and neighbours were exceptionally interesting people. During our stay in Emirghian we met for instance Ihsan Pasha, the Turkish general who, being taken prisoner by the Russians during the war, and having refused to give his word of honour that he would not attempt to escape, was exiled to the innermost part of Siberia. He told us in the most vivid manner how he ran away from his captors in the middle of a stormy night, disguised as a peasant; how, for three long months he had to walk--hunted and tracked by the Cossacks and travelling only by night--to reach the Chinese border; how he arrived, half-starved and completely exhausted in Mukden, in Mandchouria, where a community of rich Chinese Moslems gave him hospitality and, after he had recovered from his three months' walk across the steppes of Siberia, gave him money to continue his trip. He told us--but with much less detail--the difficulties he had had to elude the Allied Secret Service which were on the lookout for him when he crossed Japan and the United States, although America had not yet entered the war at that time. However, he did not tell us how he succeeded in crossing the Atlantic despite the severe surveillance of England and how he succeeded in running the Allied blockade of Turkey and popped out one day in Constantinople after every one had entirely given up hope of ever seeing him alive again. Under the most difficult and trying circumstances he had thus succeeded in getting over seemingly unsurmountable obstacles and accomplishing in war time, tracked by enemies on all sides, a complete loop around the world in less than ten months.