been there for three years, and no one had troubled to finish it. There was a beggar at the corner—a fine old man with no legs. He must have made a fortune, because everyone who passed gave him something. It would be fine on a snowy night when the night-watchmen built great fires of logs to keep them warm. “On a starry night I could see the domes of St. Saviour’s Cathedral like little golden clouds—very beautiful.” “And what was the inside of your flat like?” asked Katherine. She had been leaning a little forward, her hands clasped together, deeply interested. “Oh! very small! I made it as English as I could. It had central heating and, in the winter, with the double windows, it got very stuffy. I had English pictures and English books, but it was never very comfortable. I don’t know why. Nothing in Russia’s comfortable. I had a funny old servant called Sonia. She was fond of me, but she drank; she was always having relations to stay with her. I would find funny-looking men in the kitchen in the morning. She had no idea of time, and would cook well or badly as she pleased. She liked to tell fairy stories; she stole and she drank and she lied, but I kept her because I couldn’t bother to change her.” He stopped—then began again, but now more dreamily than before, as though he’d been carried far away from the train, from England, from Katherine. “Yes—that was it—one couldn’t be bothered. One couldn’t be bothered about anything, and one didn’t need to bother, because no one else bothered either. Perhaps that’s just why I loved it, as I see now that I did love it. No one cared for anything but what was in the air—dreams, superstitions, stories. The country itself was like that too—so vague, so vast and boundless, so careless and heedless, so unpractical, so good for dreams, so bad for work, so unfinished, letting so many things go to pieces, so beautiful and so ugly, so depressing and so cheerful, so full of music and of ugly sounds ... so bad to live in, so good to dream in. I was happy there and I didn’t know it—I was happy and didn’t know it.” His voice had sunk to a whisper, so that Katherine could not catch his words. She touched the sleeve of his coat. “Come back, Phil, come back,” she said, laughing. “You’re lost.” He started, then smiled at her. “It’s all right ... but it’s odd. There are so many things that didn’t seem to me to be curious and beautiful then that are so now.” Then, looking at Katherine very intently, as though he were calling her back to him, he said: “But don’t talk to me about Russia. It’s bad for me. I don’t want to think of it. I’ve left it for ever. And when you ask me questions it revives me, as though it still had some power.... You say that you’re afraid of it—why,” he ended, laughing, “I believe I’m afraid of it too—I don’t _want_ to think of it. It’s England now and Glebeshire and you—and you,” he whispered. They were interrupted then by an attendant, who told them that it was time for the first luncheon.