cholas, the
reconciliations, the times when he had been ill, the times when they had
gone to the country, to the theatre... and through it all she heard
Semyonov's voice, "By the way, what about your friend Lawrence?... He's
in a position of very considerable danger... considerable danger...
considerable danger..."

By the evening she was almost frantic. Nina had been with a girl friend
in the Vassily Ostrov all day. She would perhaps stay there all night
if there were any signs of trouble. No one returned. Only the clock
ticked on. Old Sacha asked whether she might go out for an hour. Vera
nodded her head. She was then quite alone in the flat.

Suddenly, about seven o'clock, Nina came in. She was tired, nervous, and
unhappy. The Revolution had not come to _her_ as anything but a sudden
crumbling of all the life that she had known and believed in. She had
had, that afternoon, to run down a side street to avoid a machine-gun,
and afterwards on the Morskaia she had come upon a dead man huddled up
in the snow like a piece of offal. These things terrified her and she
did not care about the larger issues. Her life had been always intensely
personal--not selfish so much as vividly egoistic through her vitality.
And now she was miserable, not because she was afraid for her own
safety, but because she was face to face, for the first time, with the
unknown and the uncertain.

She came in, sat down at the table, put her head into her arms and burst
into tears. She must have looked a very pathetic figure with her little
fur hat askew, her hair tumbled--like a child whose doll is suddenly
broken.

Vera was at her side in a moment. She put her arms around her.

"Nina, dear, what is it?... Has somebody hurt you? Has something
happened? Is anybody--killed?"

"No!" Nina sobbed. "Nobody--nothing--only--I'm frightened. It all looks
so strange. The streets are so funny, and--there was--a dead man on the
Morskaia."

"You shouldn't have gone out, dear. I oughtn't to have let you. But now
we can just be cosy together. Sacha's gone out. There's no one here but
ourselves. We'll have supper and make ourselves comfortable."

Nina looked up, staring about her. "Has Sacha gone out? Oh, I wish she
hadn't!... Supposing somebody came."

"No one will come. Who could? No one wants to hurt _us!_ I've been here
all the afternoon, and no one's come near the flat. If anybody did come
we've only got to telephone to Nicholas. He's with Rozanov all