Russian with their placid family portraits, their old tables and
chairs, not beautiful save for their fidelity, and old thumbed
editions of Pushkin and Gogol and Lermontov in the bookshelves.
Clocks, old slow clocks, all telling different time, all over the
house. The house was very neat, but in odd corners there were all
those odd family things that Russians collect, china of the worst
period, brass trays, large candlesticks, musical boxes, anything you
please. Only in the dining-room there was some attempt at modernity.
Bad modern furniture, on the walls bad copies of such things as
Somoff's 'Blue Lady,' Vrubel's 'Pan' and one of Benoit's 'Peter the
Great' water-colours. Beyond this room the house was of eighty years
ago, muffled in its old furniture, speaking with the voice of its old
clocks, scented with the scent of its musk and lavender, watched by
the contented gaze of the old family portraits.

"Alexandra Pavlovna, Andrey Vassilievitch's wife, was waiting for us.
Has it happened to you yet that your life that has been such and such
a life is in the moment of a heart-beat all another life? You have
passed an examination, you are suddenly ill, you break your back by a
fall, or more simply than all of these, you enter a town, see a
picture, hear a bar of music.... The thing's done: all values changed:
what you saw before you see no longer, what you needed before you need
no longer, what you expected before you expect no longer.... Alexandra
Pavlovna was not a beautiful woman. Not tall, with hair quite grey,
eyes not dark nor light--sad though. When she smiled there was great
charm but so it is true of many women. Her complexion was always pale
and her voice, although it was sweet to those who loved her, was
perhaps too quiet to be greatly remarked by strangers. I have known
men who thought her an ordinary woman.... She had much humour but did
not show it to every one. She was as still as that cloud there above
the hill, full of colour; like, that is, to those who loved her; seen
from another view, as perhaps that cloud may be, there was nothing
wonderful.... Nothing wonderful, but so many loved her! There was
never, I think, a woman so greatly beloved. And you may judge by me. I
had led a life in which after my work women had always played the
chief part, and as the months passed and I had grown proud I had vowed
that women must be exceptional to please me. I had felt the eye of the
world upon me. 'You'll see no