bol; his figure had been behind
the scenes so long that it had become mythical, something beyond human
power--and now, behold, it was not beyond human power at all, but was
there like a dead stinking fish. I could see the thought in their minds
as they hurried along: "Ah, he is gone, the dirty fellow--_Slava
Bogu_--the war will soon be over."

I, myself, felt the influence. Perhaps now the war would go better,
perhaps Stunner and Protopopoff and the rest of them would be dismissed,
and clean men... it was still time for the Czar.... And I heard Bohun,
in his funny, slow, childish Russian: "But you understand, Vera
Michailovna, that my father knows nothing about writing, nothing at
all--so that it wouldn't matter very much what he said.... Yes, he's
military--been in the Army always...."

Along the canal the little trees that in the spring would be green
flames were touched now very faintly by silver frost. A huge barge lay
black against the blue water; in the middle of it the rain had left a
pool that was not frozen and under the light of a street lamp blazed
gold--very strange the sudden gleam.... We passed the little wooden
shelter where an old man in a high furry cap kept oranges and apples and
nuts and sweets in paper. One candle illuminated his little store. He
looked out from the darkness behind him like an old prehistoric man. His
shed was peaked like a cocked hat, an old fat woman sat beside him
knitting and drinking a glass of tea....

"I'm sorry, Vera Michailovna, that you can't read English...." Bohun's
careful voice was explaining, "Only Wells and Locke and Jack London...."

I heard Vera Michailovna's voice. Then Bohun again:

"No, I write very slowly--yes, I correct an awful lot...."

We stumbled amongst the darkness of the cobbles; where pools had been
the ice crackled beneath our feet, then the snow scrunched.... I loved
the sound, the sharp clear scent of the air, the pools of stars in the
sky, the pools of ice at our feet, the blue like the thinnest glass
stretched across the sky. I felt the poignancy of my age, of the country
where I was, of Bohun's youth and confidence, of the war, of disease and
death--but behind it all happiness at the strange sense that I had
to-night, that came to me sometimes from I knew not where, that the
undercurrent of the river of life was stronger than the eddies and
whirlpools on its surface, that it knew whither it was speeding, and
that the purpose behind its for