on't know what she did then," said Lawrence. "I think she suddenly
began to run down the passage. I know she was crying, 'Paul! Paul!
Paul!'... I never saw her again."

The officer--an elderly kindly-looking man like a doctor or a lawyer (I
am trying to give every possible detail, because I think it
important)--then came up to Lawrence and asked him some questions:

"What was his name?"

"Jeremy Ralph Lawrence."

"He was an Englishman."

"Yes."

"Working at the British Embassy?"

"No, at the British Military Mission."

"He was officer?"

"Yes."

"In the British Army?"

"Yes. He had fought for two years in France."

"He had been lodging with Baron Wilderling?"

"Yes. Ever since he came to Russia."

The officer nodded his head. They knew about him, had full information.
A friend of his, a Mr. Boris Grogoff, had spoken of him.

The officer was then very polite, told him that they regretted extremely
the inconvenience and discomfort to which he might be put, but that they
must detain him until this affair was concluded--"which will be very
soon" added the officer. He also added that he wished Lawrence to be a
witness of what occurred so that he should see that, under the new
regime in Russia, everything was just and straightforward.

"I tried to tell him," said Lawrence to me, "that Wilderling was off his
head. I hadn't the least hope, of course.... It was all quite clear,
and, at such a time, quite just. Wilderling had been shooting them out
of his window.... The officer listened very politely, but when I had
finished he only shook his head. That was their affair he said.

"It was then that I realised Wilderling. He was standing quite close to
me. He had obviously been struggling a bit, because his shirt was all
torn, and you could see his chest. He kept moving his hand and trying to
pull his shirt over; it was his only movement. He was as straight as a
dart, and except for the motion of his hand as still as a statue,
standing between the soldiers, looking directly in front of him. He had
been mad in that other room, quite dotty.

"He was as sane as anything now, grave and serious and rather ironical,
just as he always looked. Well it was at that moment, when I saw him
there, that I thought of Vera. I had been thinking of her all the time
of course. I had been thinking of nothing else for weeks. But that
minute, there in the hall, settled me. Callous, wasn't it? I ought to
have been thinking only of