nd, and
at once his life was changed. I was present at the beginning of the
change.

It was the evening of Rasputin's murder. The town of course talked of
nothing else--it had been talking, without cessation, since two o'clock
that afternoon. The dirty, sinister figure of the monk with his magnetic
eyes, his greasy beard, his robe, his girdle, and all his other
properties, brooded gigantic over all of us. He was brought into
immediate personal relationship with the humblest, most insignificant
creature in the city, and with him incredible shadows and shapes, from
Dostoeffsky, from Gogol, from Lermontov, from Nekrasov--from whom you
please--all the shadows of whom one is eternally subconsciously aware
in Russia--faced us and reminded us that they were not shadows but
realities.

The details of his murder were not accurately known--it was only sure
that, at last, after so many false rumours of attempted assassination,
he was truly gone, and this world would be bothered by his evil presence
no longer.

Pictures formed in one's mind as one listened. The day was fiercely
cold, and this seemed to add to the horror of it all--to the
Hoffmannesque fantasy of the party, the lights, the supper, and the
women, the murder with its mixture of religion and superstition and
melodrama, the body flung out at last so easily and swiftly, on to the
frozen river. How many souls must have asked themselves that day--"Why,
if this is so easy, do we not proceed further? A man dies more simply
than you thought--only resolution... only resolution."

I know that that evening I found it impossible to remain in my lonely
rooms; I went round to the Markovitch flat. I found Vera Michailovna and
Bohun preparing to go out; they were alone in the flat. He looked at me
apprehensively. I think that I appeared to him at that time a queer,
moody, ill-disposed fellow, who was too old to understand the true
character of young men's impetuous souls. It may be that he was
right....

"Will you come with us, Ivan Andreievitch?" Vera Michailovna asked me.
"We're going to the little cinema on Ekateringofsky--a piece of local
colour for Mr. Bohun."

"I'll come anywhere with you," I said. "And we'll talk about Rasputin."

Bohun was only too ready. The affair seemed to his romantic soul too
good to be true. Because we none of us knew, at that time, what had
really happened, a fine field was offered for every rumour and
conjecture.

Bohun had collected some