BY HUGH WALPOLE _STUDIES IN PLACE_ THE SECRET CITY THE DARK FOREST THE GOLDEN SCARECROW THE WOODEN HORSE MARADICK AT FORTY THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN _TWO PROLOGUES_ THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE FORTITUDE _THE RISING CITY_ 1. THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 2. THE GREEN MIRROR THE SECRET CITY A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS BY HUGH WALPOLE AUTHOR OF "FORTITUDE," "THE DARK FOREST," "THE DUCHESS OF WREXE," ETC. NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MAJOR JAMES ANNAND (15TH BATTALION 48TH HIGHLANDERS, C.E.F.) IN RETURN FOR THE GIFT OF HIS FRIENDSHIP In the eastern quarter dawn breaks, the stars flicker pale. The morning cock at Ju-nan mounts the wall and crows. The songs are over, the clock run down, but still the feast is set. The Moon grows dim and the stars are few; morning has come to the world. At a thousand gates and ten thousand doors the fish-shaped keys turn; Round the Palace and up by the Castle, the crows and magpies are flying. _Cock-Crow Song_. Anon. (1st Century B.C.). CONTENTS PART I Vera And Nina PART II Lawrence PART III Markovitch And Semyonov PART I VERA AND NINA THE SECRET CITY VERA AND NINA I There are certain things that I feel, as I look through this bundle of manuscript, that I must say. The first is that of course no writer ever has fulfilled his intention and no writer ever will; secondly, that there was, when I began, another intention than that of dealing with my subject adequately, namely that of keeping myself outside the whole of it; I was to be, in the most abstract and immaterial sense of the word, a voice, and that simply because this business of seeing Russian psychology through English eyes has no excuse except that it _is_ English. That is its only interest, its only atmosphere, its only motive, and if you are going to tell me that any aspect of Russia psychological, mystical, practical, or commercial seen through an English medium is either Russia as she really is or Russia as Russians see her, I say to you, without hesitation, that you don't know of what you are talking.