All the rest of Europe has long been intelligent enough to understand that even the most microscopic effort, when added to other efforts, produces a total of labour that must be of use to all the world. Alas! It will be a very long time before the dull, stupid Russian bears are brought to understand even something so simple as this! Irene was particularly attracted by Italian women. These charming creatures have neither nerves nor caprices. They are kind and amiable, they make friends easily, and they are ready to be of assistance to every foreigner they come across. Never once did Irene see, at Roman gatherings, anything resembling the anxious, world-worn expressions of the young girls who fill Petrograd drawing-rooms. “Shall I ever meet my fate? Shall I have many children? Shall I be happy?” say their pale, sad, restless faces. Italian girls are bright and gay and happy. They delight in the sunshine, the flowers, and the springtime of their own lives. They have no need to fear the future, for they know that to Italian men love is as necessary as air. They will never, indeed, have to deal with miserable Petrograd worldlings, who may try as they will to squeeze a drop of tenderness out of their icy hearts, but will always die without having succeeded! Irene was quite astonished at herself for finding Italian society so attractive. She, a stranger, speaking another language, holding another faith, felt quite at home in its circles. She looked back with a shudder at the old days in Petrograd, and at the bitter sense of resentment and irritation with which she had invariably returned home from all social gatherings. Here, Irene delighted in those exquisite sensual entertainments, with their music, their singing, their recitations. On leaving them, she loved to take deep breaths of the balmy night air, feeling that soft sense of luxury that a tired wanderer experiences on getting into a warm, fragrant bath. “How am I to explain all this?” wondered Irene. Alas! Like most of us, Irene did not know herself. It never occurred to her that since her earliest childhood she had never been anything but a pagan. Whereas, however, Roman paganism was hereditary and the result of centuries of voluntary enslavement to antique culture and its ideals, Irene’s paganism was simply a morbid disease. Like sufferers from progressive paralysis, who gradually sink into a state of primitive bestiality, so a diseased soul not only cannot develop, but cannot even maintain itself on a level with its contemporaries, and invariably slips back to the ideals of a past civilization. XIV