best poker face and calmly continued:

"I don't know, and do not care to know, what you are after, Frank.
Personally--I cannot find anything in the old regime that I would
regret to any important extent. On the other hand--I honestly do
not see anything attractive, or particularly elegant, about the new
regime. Practically there is no regime whatsoever in this present
concoction of kuvaka and elevated ideas. So, finally, damn it all! I
would be grateful to a friend who would advise me how to get out of
any activity, and of course, would not consider any suggestion leading
me into it. My decision is plain. I resign. Then I realize all I can
and disappear from this rich field of political life. That's all,
Frank."

He looked at me. He was very grave. And then suddenly his face changed
and he again became the chap that amused Maroossia and myself in
Marienbad a few years ago.

"So I feel, old man, exactly so," he laughed,--"aren't all of them the
rottenest types one ever saw? Trash, my dear sir, trash. And I greet
your decision."

The tension which I felt at the beginning of the dinner disappeared
completely, and we began to talk about different things, remembering
the time when we met, and recollecting our mutual impressions of
1912-1913, when things and people seemed to be so very different. I
could not help, however, asking Frank at the end of our dinner:

"Are there any especial reasons to try and be foxy with me, or any
reasons to frighten me with mysteries?"

He answered:...

(_several lines scratched out_)

..."no such things as mysteries. This is the commonest of all planets
and everything is plain and entirely within the old three dimensions.
Some very cautious persons do not see the matter clearly--or
perhaps they are too stubborn to see it right,--and it makes them
suspicious.... You'll kindly forgive me," he added, "if I'll have to
be going?"...

After his departure--it was only about 9:30, as I had nothing to do,
I went to the New Club. No Misha there. I saw Boris Vlad. drunk as a
sailor in company with three or four other rascals; I think the short
one was the man from the Red Cross. In the card room--a gloomy game of
bridge, no word said unless for a real mistake....

So I came home and looked out of the window onto the deserted and
neglected streets of my Northern Palmira....

12.

Millions of those who fell for their countries in Europe and Asia
paved the way for a general depreci