Meanwhile good tidings came from the seat of war; a conference, which assembled in Paris, occasioned a suspension of hostilities. It must surely be the presage of peace, and I clung with all my might to my hope that war would soon be over, and that all my anxieties, my worries, would be at an end. Cheered and strengthened, I so far recovered my spirits as to be able to receive Colonel K., but that gentleman proved to be very unsympathetic and disappointing, for instead of confirming my happy expectations, he prophecied dreadful things, and when I said I hoped better days were in store for me, he replied that it was easy to hope, that hope’s cheap, but nevertheless any possibility of peace was held to be out of the question, and that war would go on for a long time yet But I refused to face that picture. “It won’t, it won’t,” I screamed out, but it was only to make myself believe it wasn’t true. At that moment my anger had risen so high that I struggled against an impulse to fling him out of the room. At last, no longer able to contain myself, I lost all self-control. “I hate you!” I cried out vehemently, and darted past him into Helena’s room and locked myself in. It was certainly very rude of me to give way to such an undignified outburst of passion, but I was so furious with my visitor that I could not be polite to him at that moment, to save my life. One of my St. Petersburg ex-pages, B⸺, a newly promoted officer, was passing through Alexandropol to the seat of war, and paid me an unexpected visit, but I was in a mood which makes one long to mope in solitude, and could not endure callers, so he was turned from my door greatly disappointed. That officer, as well as all the rest of the unfair sex, (I beg your pardon, gentlemen!) was naught to me; my husband being the one man in the world for me, my heart being true as steel to him, I wanted him alone and no one else.