ussian General who occupied her
town. Now her protector is at the front, and she goes about with A----.

A---- is cynical. Women and horses and cards make up his life. In a
conversation he feels his audience as if it were a new horse he is
learning to ride. He goes as near the danger line as he dares. He has no
breeding, and spends his money extravagantly.

K----, the last comer at the _pension_, is a journalist. He has no race
or polish, and the rest rather despise him for having none of their
landed traditions. He is lean and brown, with a razor-like jaw and a
twisted, sardonic expression to his lips. His face is cruel. At Warsaw,
where he was working, he was thrown into prison time after time on
account of the radical, revolutionary character of his articles. He is
well known for the strong, intellectual quality of his work. The
reactionaries fear him. The slipshod Russian way of handling things gets
on his nerves. His eyes get like steel when he talks about it. Russia's
corruption and the German advance--ammunition willfully miscarried--guns
sent to the front without ammunition, and ammunition sent that doesn't
fit; and the soldiers obliged to fight with their naked fists!

He has sent me Chamberlin's "Genesis of the Fourteenth Century." We
discuss it after dinner. It's interesting, though Chamberlin sets forth
an idea he tries to prove at all costs. Read it, if you haven't already.

How terribly I miss you. Why do I write of Pan Tchedesky and the
Morowskis when I only want to be telling you how I love you and miss
you? But it is almost unbearable to write you a love-letter. So many
miles are between us and so many months still separate us. Over a year
more to be lived through. No. I must keep to decaying Polish gentlemen
and exiled noblemen and trust you to know that every word in this letter
is a love-word to you, telling you I hold you so close to me that you
are one with me in everything I think or do.

_July 27, 1915._

_Darlingest Mother and Dad:--_

It is very hot, and food is unappetizing. The drinking-water must be
boiled, and inevitably we drink it lukewarm. It never has time to cool.
There is fruit sold on the street, but we are warned against it on
account of cholera. There is already cholera and typhus reported in the
city. So we thick vegetable soup with sour cream, fried bread with
chopped meat inside, cheese noodles with sour cream, etc., all Polish
cooking