s. When he raised his eyes finally, to
reply, I noticed how lifeless and indifferent they were, and glazed by
age. I could see the bones of his face move under the skin as he talked,
especially two little round bones, like balls, close to his ears.

"I have nothing to do with the case. It has been referred to the General
Staff, I believe. You will have to wait for the course of events."

He turned his back, went over to the window, and began to play with a
curtain-tassel. An aide bowed me to the door.

Outside, the anteroom was crowded with supplicants. It was his reception
hour. The murmur of whispered conversations stopped when we appeared.
Every one rose, pressing forward to reach the aide. Some held out soiled
bits of paper; others talked in loud, explanatory voices, as though
hoping by sheer noise to pierce the crust of official attention. But the
aide took no more notice than if they had been crowding sheep. He
pushed through them and escorted me to the head of the staircase. Down I
went, boiling with rage.

_Dearest Mother and Dad:--_

I am just back from the General Staff, where the mysterious rotation of
the official wheel landed me unexpectedly into the very sanctum
sanctorum of the Chief of the Staff, and to see him I had to wait only
five hours with Mr. Douglas in the anteroom! Mr. Douglas has just left
me to go to his club, exhausted, ready to devour pounds of Moscow
sausages, so he said.

The anteroom of the General Staff was as Russian as Russian can be. I
suppose I shall never forget the dingy room, with its brown painted
walls and the benches and chairs ranged along the four sides of the
room, and the orderlies bringing in glasses of tea, and the waiting
people who were not ashamed to be unhappy. In the beginning Mr. Douglas
and I tried to talk, but after an hour or so we relapsed into silence. I
looked up at the large oil paintings of deceased generals which hung
about the room. At first, they all looked fat and stupid and alike in
the huge, ornate gilt frames. But after much study they began to take
on differences--slight differences which it seemed that the painters had
caught in spite of themselves, but which made human beings of even
generals.

There was one portrait that I remember, in the corner, a general in the
uniform of the Crimean War. He looked out at you with green eyes, like a
cat's. The more I looked at him, the more he resembled a cat, with his
flat, broad head and slightly al