u had expected, in a vision cut off from
the rest of the world, but in a revelation that you shared and that was
only revealed because you were uniting with others. And yet your
individuality was still there, strengthened, heightened, purified.

And the vision of the figure remains....

When I woke on Saturday morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was
conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some
affair whose uncertainty had worried me. I lay in bed chuckling as
though I had won a triumph over Semyonov, as though I said to myself,
"Well, I needn't be afraid of him any longer." It was a most beautiful
day, crystal clear, with a stainless blue sky and the snow like a carpet
of jewels, and I thought I would go and see how the world was behaving.
I walked down the Morskaia, finding it quiet enough, although I fancied
that the faces of the passers-by were anxious and nervous. Nevertheless,
the brilliant sunshine and the clear peaceful beauty of the snow
reassured me--the world was too beautiful and well-ordered a place to
allow disturbance. Then at the corner of the English shop where the
Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had
occurred. It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with
whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its
face and showed me a new grin.

The broad space of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very
quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly
stirring stream.

As I looked up the Nevski I realised what it was that had given me the
first positive shock of an altered world. The trams had stopped. I had
never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to
stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of Isvostchicks galloped
past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along,
amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country.
Now the elephants were gone; the Isvostchicks were gone. So far as my
eye could see, the black stream flooded the shining way.

I mingled with the crowd and found myself slowly propelled in an
amiable, aimless manner up the street.

"What's the matter?" I asked a cheerful, fat little "Chinovnik," who
seemed to be tethered to me by some outside invincible force.

"I don't know...." he said. "They're saying there's been some shooting
up by the Nicholas Station--but that was last night. Some women had a
processio