t I experience when you are near me.

"Now that you have gone, life is only one grey sea of despair.
There was a Court last night, but I did not attend. Instead Anna
[Madame Vyrubova] and I read your sweet letters together, and we
kissed your picture.

"As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good
daughter of Christ. But oh! it is so difficult. Help me, dear
Father. Pray for me. Pray always for Alexis [the Tsarevitch].
Come back to us at once. Nikki [the Tsar] says we cannot endure
life without you, for there are so many pitfalls before us. For
myself, I am longing for your return--longing--always longing!
Without our weekly meetings all is gloom----"

Here I broke off. What followed ought, I saw, not to be read aloud to
that trio, who might at any moment turn to be enemies of the Starets.

"Yes," he said, smiling in gratification. "The woman evidently misses me.
It places a woman in her proper position to discard her for a while," he
added with a drunken laugh. "What else does she say?"

"Only that they are due to go to Yalta, but that Her Majesty awaits your
return," I replied.

"Then let her wait. I am very comfortable here. Perm is pleasant as a
change."

I knew well that he was enjoying himself hugely and had already formed a
great circle of hysterical women who believed in his divinity and
practised the rites of his disgraceful "religion."

The final words of that amazing letter, which in itself showed the terms
upon which Alexandra Feodorovna was with the convicted horse-stealer from
Pokrovsky, were as follows:

"Here, O dear Father, we have only the everlasting toll of war!
Germany is winning--as she will surely win. She must. You will
see to that! But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards
our Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May God bring you
back to us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due
to go to Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace
you, and so do Nikki and Anna.--Your devoted daughter, ALIX."

The unkempt quartette, treating the Empress's expressions of affection as
a huge joke, filled their glasses with champagne and drank heavily again,
while Rasputin began to regale his "saintly" companions with stories of
the intimate life of the pro-German Empress.

Truly, it was a gay, dissolute life that the verminous rascal was leading
at the