The Empress at first demurred ... but, when she realised how much the Grand Duchesses dreaded her being left alone, she consented. “Well, Lili,” she said reluctantly, “you see that the children must have their own way. But I will not allow anyone to think I am frightened. Undress upstairs, and, when my maids have left me, slip down the private staircase, bring your [Illustration: HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY AND THE TSAREVITCH, 1913] [Illustration: THE EMPRESS (End of 1915)] sheets and blankets, and you can make up a bed on the couch in my boudoir.” It was a bright moonlight night. Outside, the snow lay like a pall on the frost-bound Park. The cold was intense. The silence of the great Palace was occasionally broken by snatches of drunken songs and the coarse laughter of the soldiers. The intermittent firing of guns was audible. It was a night of beauty, defiled by the base passions of men. I went quietly downstairs to the mauve boudoir. The Empress was waiting for me, and as she stood there I thought how girlish she looked. Her long hair fell in a heavy plait down her back, and she wore a loose silk dressing-gown over her night clothes. She was very pale, very ethereal, but unutterably pathetic. As I stumbled into the boudoir with my draperies of sheets and blankets she smiled--a little affectionate, mocking smile, which deepened as she watched me trying to arrange my bed on the couch. She came forward, still smiling. “Oh, Lili ... you Russian ladies don’t know how to be useful. When I was a girl, my grandmother, Queen Victoria, showed me how to make a bed. I’ll teach _you_.” And she deftly arranged the bedding, saying, as she did so: “Take care not to lie on this broken spring. I always had an idea _something_ was amiss with this couch.” The bed-making “à la mode de Windsor” was soon finished, and the Empress kissed me affectionately and bade me good night. “I’ll leave my bedroom door open,” she said; “then you won’t feel lonely.” Sleep for me was impossible. I lay on the mauve couch--_her_ couch--unable to realise that this strange happening was a part of ordinary life. Surely I must be dreaming; surely I should suddenly awake in my own bed at Petrograd, and find that the Revolution and its attendant horrors were only a nightmare! But the sound of coughing in the Empress’s bedroom told me that, alas! it was no dream.... She was moving about, unable, like myself, to sleep. The light above the sacred ikon made a luminous pathway between the bedroom and the boudoir, and presently the Empress came back to me, carrying an eiderdown. “It’s bitterly cold,” she said. “I want you to be comfortable, Lili, so I’ve brought you another quilt.” She tucked the quilt well round my shoulders, regardless of my protestations, and again bade me good night.