e worst things in France without flinching--but he
was neither old enough nor young enough to face without a tremor the
queer world of nerves and unfulfilled expectation in which he found
himself. In the first place, Petrograd was so very different from
anything that he had expected. Its size and space, its power of reducing
the human figure to a sudden speck of insignificance, its strange lights
and shadows, its waste spaces and cold, empty, moonlit squares, its
jumble of modern and mediaeval civilisation, above all, its supreme
indifference to all and sundry--these things cowed and humiliated him.
He was sharp enough to realise that here he was nobody at all. Then he
had not expected to be so absolutely cut off from all that he had known.
The Western world simply did not seem to exist. The papers came so
slowly that on their arrival they were not worth reading. He had not
told his friends in England to send his letters through the Embassy bag,
with the result that they would not, he was informed, reach him for
months.

Of his work I do not intend here to speak,--it does not come into this
story,--but he found that it was most complicated and difficult, and
kicks rather than halfpence would be the certain reward. And Bohun hated
kicks....

Finally, he could not be said to be happy in the Markovitch flat. He
had, poor boy, heard so much about Russian hospitality, and had formed,
from the reading of the books of Mr. Stephen Graham and others,
delightful pictures of the warmest hearts in the world holding out the
warmest hands before the warmest samovars. In its spirit that was true
enough, but it was not true in the way that Bohun expected it.

The Markovitches, during those first weeks, left him to look after
himself because they quite honestly believed that that was the thing
that he would prefer. Uncle Ivan tried to entertain him, but Bohun found
him a bore, and with the ruthless intolerance of the very young, showed
him so. The family did not put itself out to please him in any way. He
had his room and his latchkey. There was always coffee in the morning,
dinner at half-past six, and the samovar from half-past nine onwards.
But the Markovitch family life was not turned from its normal course.
Why should it be?

And then he was laughed at. Nina laughed at him. Everything about him
seemed to Nina ridiculous--his cold bath in the morning, his
trouser-press, the little silver-topped bottles on his table, the crease