At last the Empress decided to tell the Grand Duchesses about the abdication ... she could not bear this painful task to devolve upon her husband. She therefore made her way to their apartments, and was with them alone for a long time. Anantasie seemed to sense what had happened ... and after her mother had left them she looked at me, and said, very quietly, “Mamma has told us everything, Lili; but, as Papa is coming, nothing else matters. However, you have known what was going on ... how could you keep it from us? Why, you’re usually so nervous ... how is it you are so calm?” I kissed her, and said that I owed all my fortitude to her mother. She had set such an example of courage that it was impossible for me not to follow it. When the Empress broke the news to the Tsarevitch, the following conversation took place: “Shall I never go to G.H.Q. again with Papa?” asked the child. “No, my darling--never again,” replied his mother. “Shan’t I see my regiments and my soldiers?” he said anxiously. “No ... I fear not.” “Oh dear! And the yacht, and all my friends on board--shall we never go yachting any more?” He was almost on the verge of tears. “No ... we shall never see the ‘Standart.’ ... It doesn’t belong to us now.” The Empress and I took tea together, and she told me how glad she felt that the Garde Equipage had left their colours in the Palace. “I should be so sorry to think that the colours were in the possession of the Duma,” she remarked. At that moment we heard the sound of voices, and a noise of singing and shouting. The Empress sprang off the couch on which she was lying, and rushed across to the window. “Oh, Madame, don’t look, I implore you,” I said, fearing the worst. But she did not hear me. Then I saw her grow pale, and she fell back half fainting on the couch. The sailors were leaving the Palace with the colours! The Grand Duchess Marie was seized with measles late that evening. Like her sister, Anastasie, she dreaded being ill. “Oh, I did so want to be up when Papa comes,” she kept on repeating, until high fever set in, and she lost consciousness ... her last comprehensible words being, “Lili, can’t you sleep with Mamma to-night?” “Yes, darling,” I told her. “I won’t leave Mamma alone--I’ll be somewhere near her, even if I have to sleep in the bath.” I went to the Empress. “Madame,” I said, “will you permit me to remain near you to-night?” “No, Lili, certainly not. If anything should happen, why should you be obliged to witness a tragedy?” she replied. I returned to Olga and Tatiana, who, like Marie, were very anxious about their mother. “Lili, you _must_ not leave Mamma alone. One of us has always slept with her[5]--she’s not strong. Promise, promise us that you won’t leave her alone;” and, when the Empress came to pay her last visit to the sick-room, the Grand Duchesses reiterated their request.