I don't suppose he was thinking much of her--his mind was on Vera all the time--but after he had left her and lay in bed, sleepless, his mind dwelt on her affectionately, and he thought that he would like to help her. He realised, quite clearly, that Wilderling was in a very dangerous position, but I don't think that it ever occurred to him for a moment that it would be wise for him to move to another flat. On the next day, Thursday, Lawrence did not return until the middle of the afternoon. The town was, by now, comparatively quiet again. Numbers of the police had been caught and imprisoned, some had been shot and others were in hiding; most of the machine-guns shooting from the roofs had ceased. The abdication of the Czar had already produced the second phase of the Revolution--the beginning of the struggle between the Provisional Government and the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Deputies, and this was proceeding, for the moment, inside the walls of the Duma rather than in the streets and squares of the town. Lawrence returned, therefore, that afternoon with a strange sense of quiet and security. "It was almost, you know, as though this tommy-rot about a White Revolution might be true after all--with this jolly old Duma and their jolly old Kerensky runnin' the show. Of course I'd seen the nonsense about their not salutin' the officers and all that, but I didn't think any fellers alive would be such dam fools.... I might have known better." He let himself into the flat and found there a death-like stillness--no one about and no sound except the tickings of the large clock in the drawing-room. He wandered into that horribly impressive place and suddenly sat down on the sofa with a realisation of extreme physical fatigue. He didn't know why he was so tired, he had felt quite "bobbish" all the week; suddenly now his limbs were like water, he had a bad ache down his spine and his legs were as heavy as lead. He sat in a kind of trance on that sofa, he was not asleep, but he was also, quite certainly, not awake. He wondered why the place was so "beastly still" after all the noise there had been all the week. There was no one left alive--every one dead--except himself and Vera... Vera... Vera. Then he was conscious that some one was looking at him through the double-doors. At first he didn't realise who it was, the face was so white and the figure so quiet, then, pulling himself together, he saw that it was the old servant. "What is it, Andre?" he asked, sitting up. The old man didn't answer, but came into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. Lawrence saw that he was trembling with fright, but was still endeavouring to behave with dignity. "Barin! Barin!" he whispered, as though Lawrence were a long way from him. "Paul Konstantinovitch! (that was Wilderling). He's mad.... He doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, sir, stop him, stop him, or we shall all be murdered!" "What is he doing?" asked Lawrence, standing up.