ame to Petrograd and through the English
Embassy found a place in one of the hospitals, where I worked as a
sanitar for three months. I did not leave England until November, so
that I have been in Russia now just six months. It was in this
hospital that I met Miss Krassovsky--Marie Ivanovna. From the first
moment I loved her, of course. And she liked me. She was the first
woman, since my mother, who had really liked me. She quickly saw my
devotion and she laughed a little, but she was always kind. I could
talk to her and she liked to listen. She had--she has, great ideals,
great hopes and ambitions. We worked together there and then,
afterwards, in those beautiful spring evenings in Petrograd when the
canals shone all night and the houses were purple, we walked.... The
night before last night I begged her to marry me ... and she accepted.
She said that we would go together to the war, that I should be her
knight and she my lady and that we would care for the wounds of the
whole world. Ah! what a night that was--shall I ever forget it? After
she had left me, I walked all night and sang.... I was mad.... I am
mad now. That she should love _me_! She, so beautiful, so pure, so
wonderful. I at whom women have always laughed. Ah! God forgive me, my
heart will break--"

As he spoke the heavy grey clouds of the first dawn were parting and a
faint very liquid blue, almost white and very cold, hovered above dim
shapeless trees and fields. I flung open the corridor window and a
sound of running water and the first notes of some sleepy bird met me.

"And her family?" I said. "Who are they, and will they not mind her
marrying an Englishman?"

"She has only a mother," he answered. "I fancy that Marie has always
had her own way."

"Yes," I thought to myself. "I also fancy that that is so." A sense of
almost fatherly protection had developed in myself towards him. How
could he, who knew nothing at all of women, hope to manage that
self-willed, eager, independent girl? Why, why, why had she engaged
herself to him? I fancied that very possibly there were qualities in
him--his very childishness and helplessness--which, if they only
irritated an Englishman, would attract a Russian. Lame dogs find a
warm home in Russia. But did she know anything about him? Would she
not, in a week, be irritated by his incapacity? And he--he--bless his
innocence!--was so confident as though he had been married to her for
years!

"Look here!" I said, m