ce was strong and true and good....

"Oh," I heard Bohun say, "I'm not really very young, Vera Michailovna.
After all, it's what you've done rather than your actual years...."

"You're older than you'll ever be again, Bohun, if that's any
consolation to you," I said.

We had arrived. The cinema door blazed with light, and around it was
gathered a group of soldiers and women and children, peering in at a
soldiers' band, which, placed on benches in a corner of the room, played
away for its very life. Outside, around the door were large bills
announcing "The Woman without a Soul, Drama in four parts," and there
were fine pictures of women falling over precipices, men shot in
bedrooms, and parties in which all the guests shrank back in extreme
horror from the heroine. We went inside and were overwhelmed by the
band, so that we could not hear one another speak. The floor was covered
with sunflower seeds, and there was a strong smell of soldiers' boots
and bad cigarettes and urine. We bought tickets from an old Jewess
behind the pigeon-hole and then, pushing the curtain aside, stumbled
into darkness. Here the smell was different, being, quite simply that of
human flesh not very carefully washed. Although, as we stumbled to some
seats at the back, we could feel that we were alone, it had the
impression that multitudes of people pressed in upon us, and when the
lights did go up we found that the little hall was indeed packed to its
extremest limit.

No one could have denied that it was a cheerful scene. Soldiers,
sailors, peasants, women, and children crowded together upon the narrow
benches. There was a great consumption of sunflower seeds, and the
narrow passage down the middle of the room was littered with fragments.
Two stout and elaborate policemen leaned against the wall surveying the
public with a friendly if superior air. There was a tremendous amount of
noise. Mingled with the strains of the band beyond the curtain were
cries and calls and loud roars of laughter. The soldiers embraced the
girls, and the children, their fingers in their mouths, wandered from
bench to bench, and a mangy dog begged wherever he thought that he saw a
kindly face. All the faces were kindly--kindly, ignorant, and
astoundingly young. As I felt that youth I felt also separation; I and
my like could emphasise as we pleased the goodness, docility, mysticism
even of these people, but we were walking in a country of darkness. I
caught a laugh,