late."

Vera then, very calmly and quietly, took command of the situation.
"We'll go and see," she said, "what is really the truth."

We turned up the side street to the Moika Canal, which lay like powdered
crystal under the moon. Not a soul was in sight.

There arrived then one of the most wonderful moments of my life. The
Nevski Prospect, that broad and mighty thoroughfare, stretched before us
like a great silver river. It was utterly triumphantly bare and naked.
Under the moon it flowed, with proud tranquillity, so far as the eye
could see between its high black banks of silent houses.

At intervals of about a hundred yards the Cossack pickets, like ebony
statues on their horses, guarded the way. Down the whole silver expanse
not one figure was to be seen; so beautiful was it under the high moon,
so still, so quiet, so proud, that it was revealing now for the first
time its real splendour. At no time of the night or day is the Nevski
deserted. How happy it must have been that night!...

For us, it was as though we hesitated on the banks of a river. I felt a
strange superstition, as though something said to me, "You cross that
and you are plunged irrevocably into a new order of events. Go home, and
you will avoid danger." Nina must have had something of the same
feeling, because she said:

"Let's go home. They won't let us cross. I don't want to cross. Let's go
home."

But Vera said firmly, "Nonsense! We've gone so far. We've got the
tickets. I'm going on."

I felt the note in her voice, superstitiously, as a kind of desperate
challenge, as though she had said:

"Well, you see nothing worse can happen to me than has happened."

Lawrence said roughly, "Of course, we're going on."

The prostitute began, in a trembling voice, as though we must all of
necessity understand her case:

"I don't want to be late this time, because I've been late so often
before.... It always is that way with me... always unfortunate...."

We started across, and when we stepped into the shining silver surface
we all stopped for an instant, as though held by an invisible force.

"That's it," said Vera, speaking it seemed to herself. "So it always is
with us. All revolutions in Russia end this way--"

An unmounted Cossack came forward to us.

"No hanging about there," he said. "Cross quickly. No one is to delay."

We moved to the other side of the Moika bridge. I thought of the
Cossacks yesterday who had assured the people tha