I was about to rise from the chair to tell my story, but was very courteously asked to remain seated. I then told of my wound in the back, of the operation that I still needed for the extraction of a piece of shell, and of my consulting a Petrograd physician who had advised me to go to the Springs at Kislovodsk. I said that I had heard of the fighting between Kornilov and the Bolsheviks, at Novotcherkask, but had no idea what a civil war was like and had never thought of a front in such a struggle. I, therefore, continued my journey to Nikitino, where the Commandant had sent me on to Zverevo. Of course, I failed to mention the fact that the Commandant had sent on to Zverevo, not Botchkareva, but Smirnova, a Sister of Mercy. I concluded with the statement that as soon as I reached Zverevo I realized that I was in a dangerous situation, and had surrendered to the local authorities. I was informed that it would take a week for my case to be cleared up and a decision reached. Instead of sending me to the Butirka, the prison in which I had spent the last two weeks, I was taken to the military guard house, opposite the Soldiers’ Section. Drunken sailors and Red Guards were usually confined there. The room in which I was put was narrow and long, the windows were large but closely grated. There were about ten prisoners in it. “Ah, Botchkareva! Look who’s here!” I was met with these words as soon as I crossed the threshold. They quickly turned into phrases of abuse and ridicule. I was quiet, and sought seclusion and rest in a corner, but in vain. The inmates were Bolsheviks of the lowest sort, degenerates and former criminals. I was the object of their constant ill-treatment, so that torturing me day and night became their diversion. If I tried to sleep, I soon found some one near me. When I ate or drank, the beasts assembled about me, showering insults on me and playing dirty tricks. Weeping had no effect on them. Night after night I was forced to stay awake, sometimes throwing myself upon an intruder with my teeth in an effort to drive him away. I implored the warder to give me a cell to myself. “Let it be a cold, gloomy hole. Give me no food. But take me away from these drunken brutes!” I would plead. “We will take you away soon--to shoot you!” the warder would joke in reply, amid the uproarious laughter of my tormentors. The appointed week elapsed and still there was no decision in my case. The days--long, cruel, agonizing days--passed slowly by. The impossibility of sleeping was above all so torturing that it drove me to a state actually bordering on insanity. Two and a half weeks I lived in that inferno, seventeen days without a single full night’s sleep! Then one morning the warder, who had delighted daily in telling me stories of what would be done to me, very vivid stories of frightfulness, came in with some papers in his hand. “Botchkareva!” he called out to me. “You are free.” And he opened the door facing me.