re, and I have suffered for it. Ye gods, what a winter it has
been--disillusioning, dull, hideously and achingly disappointing!

[Page Heading: MEMORIES OF HOME]

It is too odd to think that until the war came I was the happiest woman
in the world. It is too funny to think of my house in London, which
people say is the only "salon"--a small "salon," indeed! But I can
hardly believe now in my crowds of friends, my devoted servants, my
pleasant work, the daily budget of letters and invitations, and the
press notices in their pink slips. Then the big lectures and the
applause--the shouts when I come in. The joy, almost the intoxication of
life, has been mine.

Of course, I ought to have turned back at Petrograd! But I thought all
my work was before me, and in Russia one can't go about alone without
knowing the way and the language of the people. Permits are difficult,
nothing is possible unless one is attached to a body. And now I have
reached the end--_Persia! And there is no earthly use for us, and there
are no roads._

CHAPTER V

THE LAST JOURNEY

My car turned up at Hamadan on March 9th, and on the 13th I said
good-bye to my friends at the Consulate, and left the place with a
Tartar prince, who cleared his throat from the bottom of his soul, and
spat luxuriously all the time. The mud was beyond anything that one
could imagine. There was a sea of it everywhere, and men waded knee-deep
in slush. My poor car floundered bravely and bumped heavily, till at
last it could move no more. Two wheels were sunk far past the hubs, and
the step of the car was under mud.

The Tartar prince hailed a horse from some men and flung himself across
it, and then rode off through the thick sea of mud to find help to move
the car. His methods were simple. He came up behind men, and clouted
them over the head, or beat them with a stick, and drove them in front
of him. Sometimes he took out a revolver and fired over the men's heads,
making them jump; but nothing makes them really work. We pushed on for a
mile or two, and then stuck again. This time there were no men near, and
the prince walked on to collect some soldiers at the next station. It
was a wicked, blowy day, and I crept into a wrecked "camion" and
sheltered there, and ate some lunch and slept a little. I wasn't feeling
a bit well.

That night we only made twenty miles, and then we put up at a little
rest-house, where the woman had ten children. They all had colds, a