walked up and down beside the long table,
fingering the knives and forks.

Then Nina burst in upon us in one of her frantic rages. Her tempers were
famous both for their ferocity and the swiftness of their passing. In
the course of them she was like some impassioned bird of brilliant
plumages, tossing her feathers, fluttering behind the bars of her cage
at some impertinent, teasing passer-by. She stood there now in the
doorway, gesticulating with her hands.

"_Nu, Tznaiesh schto?_ Michael Alexandrovitch has put me off--says he is
busy all night at the office. He busy all night! Don't I know the
business he's after? And it's the third time--I won't see him again--no,
I won't. He--"

"Good-evening, Nina Michailovna," I said, smiling. She turned to me.

"Durdles--Mr. Durdles--only listen. It was all arranged for
to-night--the _Parisian_, and then we were to come straight back--"

"But your guest--" I began.

However the torrent continued. The door opened and Boris Grogoff came
in. Instantly she turned upon him.

"There's your fine friend!" she cried; "Michael Alexandrovitch isn't
coming. Put me off at the last moment, and it's the third time. And I
might have gone to Musikalnaya Drama. I was asked by--"

"Well, why not?" Grogoff interrupted calmly. "If he had something better
to do--"

Then she turned upon him, screaming, and in a moment they were at it,
tooth and nail, heaping up old scores, producing fact after fact to
prove, the one to the other, false friendship, lying manners, deceitful
promises, perjured records. Vera tried to interrupt, Markovitch said
something, I began a remonstrance--in a moment we were all at it, and
the room was a whirl of noise. In the tempest it was only I who heard
the door open. I turned and saw Henry Bohun standing there.

I smile now when I think of that moment of his arrival, go fitting to
the characters of the place, so appropriate a symbol of what was to
come. Bohun was beautifully dressed, spotlessly neat, in a bowler hat a
little to one side, a light-blue silk scarf, a dark-blue overcoat. His
face wore an expression of dignified self-appreciation. It was as though
he stood there breathing blessings on the house that he had sanctified
by his arrival. He looked, too, with it all, such a boy that my heart
was touched. And there was something good and honest about his eyes.

He may have spoken, but certainly no one heard him in the confusion.

I just caught Nina's shrill vo