wonderful stories. I saw that, apart from
Rasputin, he was a new man--something had happened to him. It was not
long before I discovered that what had happened was that Vera
Michailovna had been kind to him. Vera's most beautiful quality was her
motherliness. I do not intend that much-abused word in any sentimental
fashion. She did not shed tears over a dirty baby in the street, nor did
she drag decrepit old men into the flat to give them milk and fifty
kopecks,--but let some one appeal to the strength and bravery in her,
and she responded magnificently. I believe that to be true of very many
Russian women, who are always their most natural selves when something
appeals to the best in them. Vera Michailovna had a strength and a
security in her protection of souls weaker than her own that had about
it nothing forced or pretentious or self-conscious--it was simply the
natural woman acting as she was made to act. She saw that Bohun was
lonely and miserable and, now that the first awkwardness was passed and
he was no longer a stranger, she was able, gently and unobtrusively, to
show him that she was his friend. I think that she had not liked him at
first; but if you want a Russian to like you, the thing to do is to show
him that you need him. It is amazing to watch their readiness to receive
dependent souls whom they are in no kind of way qualified to
protect--but they do their best, and although the result is invariably
bad for everybody's character, a great deal of affection is created.

As we walked to the cinema she asked him, very gently and rather shyly,
about his home and his people and English life. She must have asked all
her English guests the same questions, but Bohun, I fancy, gave her
rather original answers. He let himself go, and became very young and
rather absurd, but also sympathetic. We were, all three of us, gay and
silly, as one very often suddenly is, in Russia, in the middle of even
disastrous situations. It had been a day of most beautiful weather, the
mud was frozen, the streets clean, the sky deep blue, the air harshly
sweet. The night blazed with stars that seemed to swing through the haze
of the frost like a curtain moved, very gently, by the wind. The
Ekateringofsky Canal was blue with the stars lying like scraps of
quicksilver all about it, and the trees and houses were deep black in
outline above it. I could feel that the people in the street were happy.
The murder of Rasputin was a sign, a sym