The Baroness was a large solid lady with a fine white bosom and strong white arms. Her face was homely and kind; I saw at once that she adored her husband; her placid smile carried beneath its placidity a tremulous anxiety that he should be pleased, and her mild eyes swam in the light of his encouragement. I was sure, however, that the calm and discipline that I felt in the things around me came as much from her domesticity as from his discipline. She was a fortunate woman in that she had attained the ambition of her life--to govern the household of a man whom she could both love and fear. Lawrence came in, and we went through high folding doors into the dining-room. This room had dark-blue wall-paper, electric lights heavily shaded, and soft heavy carpets. The table itself was flooded with light--the rest of the room was dusk. I wondered as I looked about me why the Wilderlings had taken Lawrence as a paying guest. Before my visit I had imagined that they were poor, as so many of the better-class Russians were, but here were no signs of poverty. I decided that. Our dinner was good, and the wine was excellent. We talked, of course, politics, and the Baron was admirably frank. "I won't disguise from you, M. Durward," he said, "that some of us watch your English effort at winning the heart of this country with sympathy, but also, if I am not offending you, with some humour. I'm not speaking only of your propaganda efforts. You've got, I know, one or two literary gentlemen here--a novelist, I think, and a professor and a journalist. Well, soon you'll find them inefficient, and decide that you must have some commercial gentlemen, and then, disappointed with them, you'll decide for the military... and still the great heart of Russia will remain untouched." "Yes," I said, "because your class are determined that the peasant shall remain uneducated, and until he is educated he will be unable to approach any of us." "Quite so," said the Baron smiling at me very cheerfully. "I perceive, M. Durward, that you are a democrat. So are we all, these days.... You look surprised, but I assure you that the good of the people in the interests of the people is the only thing for which any of us care. Only some of us know Russia pretty well, and we know that the Russian peasant is not ready for liberty, and if you were to give him liberty to-night you would plunge his country into the most desperate torture of anarchy and carnage known in history. A little more soup?--we are offering you only a slight dinner." "Yes, but, Baron," I said, "would you tell me when it is intended that the Russian peasant shall begin his upward course towards light and learning? If that day is to be for ever postponed?"