s an old woman, a kindly,
slack one, who rarely goes out, but observes the passing life from her
windows. She wears a short, loose wrapper and petticoat, and scuffs
about in list slippers.

Then there is a young girl with shy eyes and quiet, womanlike actions.
We often see her peeking through a crack in the door when Janchu is
naughty.

And then there is Sigmund, a sly, goody-goody child of six or seven,
whom the old woman treats like a son, and whom the eldest S---- brother
has adopted as his heir. He plays with Janchu. The brothers adore him
and take him to Koupietsky Park, and watch him when he plays in the
_pension_ garden. We have heard that he is Count S----'s illegitimate
child, and that the old woman is his mother. It seems quite probable
when you think of the life on a big Polish estate--the loneliness, etc.
These three people live together in one room. The samovar is always
boiling and some one is always drinking tea there. The brothers share an
adjoining room, but they are usually with those in there, who constitute
all that remains of their former habits.

Pan A---- lives in the _pension_, too. I am told that he is typical of a
certain kind of Pole. He is a turfman, with carefully brushed
side-whiskers dyed coal-black, and hawk-like eyes. He wears check suits,
and cravats with a little diamond horse-pin. His legs are bowed like a
jockey's. He was the overseer of a big Polish estate and has made a
fortune by cards and horses. His stable is famous. He has raced from
Petrograd to London. Now, of course, his horses have been requisitioned,
and he lives by his cards. Cards are a serious business to him. He will
not play in a room where he is apt to be interrupted. Occasionally, his
wife, a hard-faced woman with tight lips, comes to the _pension_,
between the visits she makes to friends in the country. Pan A---- pays
no attention to her except to treat her with an exaggerated politeness
at table; and she, on her side, concentrates on the young men in the
_pension_. After dinner he always hands her a cigarette first, out of
his massive gold case, encrusted with arms and monograms and jewels.

"It's curious, is it not?" he says, handing me the case. "My friends
have put on their arms and monograms and mounted the jewels as
souvenirs."

Generally, he goes to the Cafe Francois with a tall blonde woman, the
wife of an Austrian. Her husband and son are fighting in the Austrian
army, but she came to Kiev with the R