all
end?

My love to you every minute.

RUTH.

_October._

_Dearests:--_

There seems no beginning or end to my stay here. How strange it is to
look back to July and remember the long, hot days and the languorous
nights when, in spite of the war, people walked in the gardens and
listened to the music and drank punch out of tea-cups, pretending it was
tea. The still, starlit nights of July.

I remember a dinner Princess P---- gave at Koupietsky Park a few nights
after my arrival in Russia. Everything was so new to me. Our table was
set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir
of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I
looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the
fantastic shimmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down
to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of
steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond,
the flat plain, silent and mysterious, with, over the horizon rim, the
thunder and clang of war. But war was far away those first days I was in
Russia. I hardly thought of it.

The dome and square walls of a monastery were momentarily whitened by a
wheeling searchlight, and high up against the dusky, starlit sky was
printed a shining gold cross. Women's dresses glimmered in the darkness
like gray, widespread wings of moths, and laughter came from the curve
of the terrace overlooking the monastery garden.

"My child, there are tears in your eyes; how pretty!" the Princess
cried, taking my hand in hers and stroking it with her small, cold
fingers.

There were other Americans present beside myself, and I knew the
Princess loved one of them. It was to make him jealous, I knew, that she
held my hand in hers throughout dinner. She, herself, hardly ate
anything, only smoked one cigarette after another. There were all sorts
of _zakouski_, stuffed tomatoes and cucumbers and queer little fishes in
oil, and pickled sturgeon and mushrooms, and salads and caviar, and
there was _kvass_ to drink,--deep red,--and a champagne cup served in a
teapot, and cigarettes all through the meal.

The Princess was middle-aged and wanted to appear youthful; so she dyed
her hair blue-black which was harsh for her pointed face, and wore
costly, too elaborate clothes from Paris. But her body showed delicately
round under th