street this evening. A Russian, too. I was so annoyed!"

"What do you mean?"

"It happened just as I started to ascend the steps.... There was a man
there, loitering. I supposed he meant to beg. So I felt for my purse,
but he jumped back and began to curse me roundly for an aristocrat and
a social parasite!"

"What did he say?"

"I was so amazed--quite stupefied. And all the while he was swearing
at me in Russian and in English, and he warned me to keep away from
Marya and Vanya and Ilse and mind my own damned business. And he said,
also, that if I didn't there were people in New York who knew how to
deal with any friend of the Russian aristocracy."

She patted a curly strand of hair into place, and came toward him in
her leisurely, lissome way.

"Fancy the impertinence of that wretched Red! And I understand that
both Vanya and Marya have received horribly insulting letters. And
Ilse, also. Isn't it most annoying?"

She seated herself at the piano and absently began the Adagio of the
famous sonata.

CHAPTER X

There was still, for Palla, much shopping to do. The drawing room she
decided to leave, for the present, caring as she did only for a few
genuine and beautiful pieces to furnish the pretty little French grey
room.

The purchase of these ought to be deferred, but she could look about,
and she did, wandering into antique shops of every class along Fifth
and Madison Avenues and the inviting cross streets.

But her chiefest quest was still for pots and pans and china; for
napery, bed linen, and hangings; also for her own and more intimate
personal attire.

To her the city was enchanting and not at all as she remembered it
before she had gone abroad.

New York, under its canopy of tossing flags and ablaze with brilliant
posters, swarmed with unfamiliar people. Every other pedestrian seemed
to be a soldier; every other vehicle contained a uniform.

There were innumerable varieties of military dress in the thronged
streets; there was the universal note of khaki and olive drab,
terminating in leather vizored barrack cap or jaunty overseas service
cap, and in spiral puttees, leather ones, or spurred boots.

Silver wings of aviators glimmered on athletic chests; chevrons, wound
stripes, service stripes, an endless variety of insignia.

Here the grey-green and oxidised metal of the marines predominated;
there, the conspicuous sage-green and gold of naval aviators. On
campaign hats were every hu