The father, however, cut short Katia’s pocket-money and cut short his wife’s housekeeping money, and made coarse jokes at the expense of the house-hold. Though Katia was twenty-two years of age she had no passport of her own. Her father simply kept her name written on his own passport, and in that way cut off the chance of his daughter’s running away from home. You cannot get far in Russia without a passport of your own. You certainly cannot get married without a passport and without many documents. Katia’s sweetheart was not at all abashed by his own poverty or by the rudeness of the father. He came to all parties and functions in his shabby clothes. He lectured the father and mother on their behaviour. He was even hard and brusque to Katia herself upon occasion. But he stood up for her dignity, and would have fought any one who insulted her. * * * * * Returning to Kief this month I rather wondered how far Katia’s romance had got. Perhaps she and Sasha were now man and wife. But I could not imagine it. One of the felicities of travelling is to pay surprise visits. I had heard nothing from Katia in the interim. So I rang at the door and gave my name to a strange servant and went in and.... Exclamations! “Oh, how fine! on the twenty-fifth of January is my wedding,” says the same beautiful Katia. “I congratulate you. I did not know whom to visit first,” said I, “you or Sasha.” “Sasha is in Moscow,” says Katia with a troubled expression. “Will you live in Kief?” I ask. “_I_ in Kief,” says she with meaning emphasis. So it is not Sasha that she is marrying. Presently in comes a bright-looking soldier of rather charming manners, and he is introduced as the bridegroom. He is a guest in the house and has been living there some weeks—Fedor Leonidovitch Smirnoff—who has completed his university course in law, and is now serving his term in the army. “The date is absolutely settled?” I suppose. “If papa will take out the papers in time,” says Katia. But the new young man is on good terms with the father. He has evidently plenty of money of his own, and he is a _persona grata_. “What of Sasha?” I ask Katia aside. “We quarrelled,” says she. “God, how we quarrelled! We were rowing in a boat on the Dnieper, and when I told him it was no good, we could never be married, he shot at me with a revolver. I had to save myself by jumping into the water.” “You’ve chosen a nice young man this time. Perhaps you are more likely to be happy with him.” “Yes. Everybody likes him.” Fedor is certainly a relief after the sternness of Sasha. He is affable, he is interested in the prices of all things, and is bourgeois, but he says that success and money and luxury do not tempt him. He would like to give up everything and try and find out what life means. He would like to be a wanderer as I am, or to go into a monastery.