belongings, an impossible suitcase and something heavy
rolled in a yellow and red blanket, looking to me from time to time
with curiosity and doubt.

"Lucie de Clive! A woman certainly could not think of anything less
snobbish even in these circumstances. You look like a real Russian
Katka-Chort in this outfit."

"That's what is required. How did you happen to pick out _your name_?"

We both laughed. Indeed, if our meeting were compared to all the
luxury and brilliance of the Cote d'Azur, or Petrograd--it was
laughable. "Have _we_ anything to eat?" she asked.

"I came home for my supper," I said. "I have some trash in the
pantry."

While I was preparing in the so-called kitchen something nice out of
a piece of frozen pilmeni--hashed meat and an old can of sardines (my
pride) she began to arrange the room. She acted as if she were trying
to justify her presence, it was clear. But with all the pleasure of
seeing someone around my house, I simply could not think what had
happened to her. Baroness B.--a lady who would not hesitate in olden
times to play a thousand pounds on a horse or order ten dresses at
Paquin's,--here, asking my hospitality! If she were a Russian--I could
understand it,--wives of Privy Counsellors and Ambassadors are selling
cheese in Petrograd now. But she--a Foreign Lady?... It was clear, she
was in some intrigue as usual, and it had led her too far.

Possibly she is after me.... And besides--her very presence would
affect my work, and endanger myself. "I must give her something to
eat, and then get out of here. The L. would keep me for a while,
and then I shall go away. Let her stay in this house with all of her
strange intrigues, for I cannot throw her out."

Thus trying to understand, I finished my cooking and asked her to the
_salle-a-manger_--the same little kitchen.

But no matter how proud I felt of my housekeeping, the Baroness found
fault with everything. "Don't _we_ have a table cloth? Or napkins?
What are these daggers for?"

"Good God, Syvorotka," she said, "_we_ cannot live in such a miserable
way. I'll have to change it. There are no reasons why _we_ should
revert to cannibalism!"

Talking in that manner, jumping from one subject to another and always
very nervously, she arranged the table more or less decently, and even
put the salt in the lid of a little powder box. "Now," she said, "I
want you to wash your hands, and comb your hair, and brush your khaki,
and ..." until I g