, although I listened. Only a
month ago there would have been no party at which Nina was present where
her voice would not have risen above all others.

No one watching us would have believed any stories about food shortage
in Petrograd. I daresay at this very moment in Berlin they are having
just such meals. Until the last echo of the last Trump has died away in
the fastnesses of the advancing mountains the rich will be getting from
somewhere the things that they desire! I have no memory of what we had
to eat that night, but I know that it was all very magnificent and
noisy, kind-hearted and generous and vulgar. A great deal of wine was
drunk, and by the end of the meal every one was talking as loudly as
possible. I had for companion the beautiful Mlle. Finisterre. She had
lived all her life in Petrograd, and she had a contempt for the citizens
of that fine town worthy of Semyonov himself. Opposite us sat a stout,
good-natured Jewess, who was very happily enjoying her food. She was
certainly the most harmless being in creation, and was probably guilty
of a thousand generosities and kindnesses in her private life.
Nevertheless, Mlle. Finisterre had for her a dark and sinister hatred,
and the remarks that she made about her, in her bitter and piercing
voice, must have reached their victim. She also abused her host very
roundly, beginning to tell me in the fullest detail the history of an
especially unpleasant scandal in which he had notoriously figured. I
stopped her at last.

"It seems to me," I said, "that it would be better not to say these
things about him while you're eating his bread and salt."

She laughed shrilly, and tapped me on the arm with a bony finger.

"Oh, you English!... always so moral and strict about the proprieties...
and always so hypercritical too. Oh, you amuse me! I'm French, you
see--not Russian at all; these poor people see through nothing--but we
French!"

After dinner there was a strange scene. We all moved into the long,
over-decorated drawing-room. We sat about, admired the pictures (a
beautiful one by Somoff I especially remember--an autumn scene with
eighteenth-century figures and colours so soft and deep that the effect
was inexpressibly delicate and mysterious), talked and then fell into
one of those Russian silences that haunt every Russian party. I call
those silences "Russian," because I know nothing like them in any other
part of the world. It is as though the souls of the whol