something to watch and to remember. I shall remember
her chiefly in the setting of the night when the moon cast her
lemon-coloured beams over the sea.

"Very beautiful and very young," said my hostess, "but already she has
a history. She is only eighteen, but is married and has run away from
her husband. She wanted to marry a Russian, but her family forced
her to take for husband a Greek, an old man, and so jealous and so
frightened of the effect of her beauty upon other men that he shut her
up and made her wear a veil like a Turk. He would not let her out by
herself, and he never brought any friends home; he took to beating
her, and then she ran away. Her father received her and promised to
protect her. The old Greek cannot get at her any more; he has given
her up and gone away."

"Good for her!" I hazarded.

"Not at all good," was the answer. "She has a husband and yet has
none. She is young, but she can't marry again because she has a
husband already."

* * * * *

At Ghilendzhik all meals were served on the verandah, and one lived
constantly in touch with the varying moods of the sea.

My hostess was a talker, ready to sit to any hour of the night
chatting of her life and of Russia. It was very pleasant to listen to
her. We sat together on the balcony after tea, with a big plate of
grapes between us, and I heard all that the world had to say at
Ghilendzhik.

A burning topic was the ruin that the sea had made of the verandah
wall. "The sea has been gradually gaining on us," said my friend.
"When we came here, the village Council reckoned on that. They smiled
when we bought the house, for they held that in quite a short time it
would be washed away. The Council wishes to build a fine esplanade all
along the sea-front--our house stands in the way and they don't wish
to buy us out. 'You'd better buy the datcha,' said Alexander Fed'otch
to them. 'Oh no,' said they, 'we leave that to God'--by 'God' meaning
the sea. They bound us under a contract not to build anything in front
of the house: they said they did not wish the view to be obstructed,
but in reality they did not want us to put up any protection against
the waves. They left the rest to Providence. The result was that the
whole property was nearly washed away in a storm.

"It happened like this. We were away at Vladikavkaz, and Vassily, the
watchman, was living in the house with his wife and family, looking
after it in our a