g I shrank from the thought of their compassion. I had not
shaved for many days. I was that dull sickly yellow colour that offends
the taste of all healthy vigorous people. I did not want their pity.
No.... I would wait until I was stronger.

My interest in life was reviving with every step that I took. I don't
know what I had expected the outside world to be. This was April 14. It
was nearly a month since the outburst of the Revolution, and surely
there should be signs in the streets of the results of such a cataclysm.
There were, on the surface, no signs. There was the same little cinema
on the canal with its gaudy coloured posters, there was the old woman
sitting at the foot of the little bridge with her basket of apples and
bootlaces, there was the same wooden hut with the sweets and the fruit,
the same figures of peasant women, soldiers, boys hurrying across the
bridge, the same slow, sleepy Isvostchick stumbling along carelessly.
One sign there was. Exactly opposite the little cinema, on the other
side of the canal, was a high grey block of flats. This now was starred
and sprayed with the white marks of bullets. It was like a man marked
for life with smallpox. That building alone was witness to me that I had
not dreamt the events of that week.

The thaw made walking very difficult. The water poured down the sides of
the houses and gurgled in floods through the pipes. The snow was
slippery under the film of gleaming wet, and there were huge pools at
every step. Across the middle of the English Prospect, near the Baths,
there was quite a deep lake....

I wandered slowly along, enjoying the chill warmth of the soft spring
sun. The winter was nearly over! Thank God for that! What had happened
during my month of illness? Perhaps a great Revolutionary army had been
formed, and a mighty, free, and united Russia was going out to save the
world! Oh, I did hope that it was so! Surely that wonderful white week
was a good omen. No Revolution in history had started so well as this
one....

I found my way at last very slowly to the end of the Quay, and the sight
of the round towers of my favourite church was like the reassuring smile
of an old friend. The sun was dropping low over the Neva. The whole vast
expanse of the river was coloured very faintly pink. Here, too, there
was the film of the water above the ice; the water caught the colour,
but the ice below it was grey and still. Clouds of crimson and orange
and faint go