in his trousers, his shining neat hair, the pearl pin in his black tie,
his precise and careful speech, the way that he said "_Nu tak...
Spasebo... gavoreet... gariachy_..." She was never tired of imitating
him; and very soon he caught her strutting about the dining-room with a
man's cap on her head, twisting a cane and bargaining with an
Isvostchick--this last because, only the evening before, he had told
them with great pride of his cleverness in that especial direction. The
fun was good-natured enough, but it was, as Russian chaff generally is,
quite regardless of sensitive feelings. Nina chaffed everybody and
nobody minded, but Bohun did not know this, and minded very much indeed.
He showed during dinner that evening that he was hurt, and sat over his
cabbage soup very dignified and silent. This made every one
uncomfortable, although Vera told me afterwards that she found it
difficult not to laugh. The family did not make themselves especially
pleasant, as Henry felt they ought to have done--they continued the even
tenor of their way. He was met by one of those sudden cold horrible
waves of isolated terror with which it pleases Russia sometimes to
overwhelm one. The snow was falling; the town was settling into a
suspicious ominous quiet. There was no light in the sky, and horrible
winds blew round the corners of abandoned streets. Henry was desperately
homesick. He would have cut and run, had there been any possible means
of doing it. He did not remember the wild joy with which he had heard,
only a few weeks before, that he was to come to Petrograd. He had
forgotten even the splendours of _Discipline_. He only knew that he was
lonely and frightened and home-sick. He seemed to be without a friend in
the world.

But he was proud. He confided in nobody. He went about with his head up,
and every one thought him the most conceited young puppy who had ever
trotted the Petrograd streets. And, although he never owned it even to
himself, Jerry Lawrence seemed to him now the one friendly soul in all
the world. You could be sure that Lawrence would be always the same; he
would not laugh at you behind your back, if he disliked something he
would say so. You knew where you were with him, and in the uncertain
world in which poor Bohun found himself that simply was everything.
Bohun would have denied it vehemently if you told him that he had once
looked down on Lawrence, or despised him for his inartistic mind.
Lawrence was "a fin