sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb:
'There's a secret city in every man's heart. It is at that city's altars
that the true prayers are offered.' There has been more than one
Revolution in the last two months."

He came up to me:

"Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards. I'm a
haunted man, you know."

He bent forward and kissed me on the lips. A moment later he was gone.

XII

That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave--and
beyond it, I expect.

He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch
and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough.
Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking
very quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded blue
carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same as
it had always been. The storm that had raged all day had now died down,
and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big
table with the fading table-cloth, on the old brown carpet, on the
picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov's
musical-box, on the old knick-knacks and the untidy shelf of books.
(Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were still
there. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long
day's efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the
reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other
armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenieff's _House of Gentle-folks_,
and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.

He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the
newspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writing
this, of course, from Bohun's account of it, and I cannot therefore
quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the
Front.

"There!" Semyonov would say, pausing. "Now, Nicholas... What do you say
to that? A nice state of things. The Colonel was murdered, of course,
although our friend the _Retch_ doesn't put it quite so bluntly. The
_Novaya Jezn_ of course highly approves. Here's another...." This went
on for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov's voice was
Markovitch's padding steps. "Ah! here's another bit!... Now what about
that, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution? See what they've been
doing near Riga! It says...."

"Can't you leave it