?"

"Do you want the Germans to rule Russia?" I asked.

"Why not?" she said, laughing. "We can't do it ourselves. We don't care
who does it. The English can do it if they like, only they're too lazy
to bother. The German's aren't lazy, and if they were here we'd have
lots of theatres and cinematographs."

"Don't you love your country?" I asked.

"This isn't our country," she answered. "It just belongs to the Empress
and Protopopoff."

"Supposing it became your country and the Emperor went?"

"Oh, then it would belong to a million different people, and in the end
no one would have anything. Can't you see how they'd fight?"... She
burst out laughing: "Boris and Nicholas and Uncle Alexei and all the
others!"

Then she was suddenly serious.

"I know, Durdles, you consider that I'm so young and frivolous that I
don't think of anything serious. But I can see things like any one else.
Can't you see that we're all so disappointed with ourselves that nothing
matters? We thought the war was going to be so fine--but now it's just
like the Japanese one, all robbery and lies--and we can't do anything to
stop it."

"Perhaps some day some one will," I said.

"Oh yes!" she answered scornfully, "men like Boris."

After that she refused to be grave for a moment, danced about the room,
singing, and finally vanished, a whirlwind of blue silk.

* * * * *

A week later I was out in the world again. That curious sense of
excitement that had first come to me during the early days of my illness
burnt now more fiercely than ever. I cannot say what it was exactly that
I thought was going to happen. I have often looked back, as many other
people must have done, to those days in February and wondered whether I
foresaw anything of what was to come, and what were the things that
might have seemed to me significant if I had noticed them. And here I am
deliberately speaking of both public and private affairs. I cannot quite
frankly dissever the two. At the Front, a year and a half before, I had
discovered how intermingled the souls of individuals and the souls of
countries were, and how permanent private history seemed to me and how
transient public events; but whether that was true or no before, it was
now most certain that it was the story of certain individuals that I was
to record,--the history that was being made behind them could at its
best be only a background.

I seemed to step into a city ablaz