In that earlier experience of Marie in the forests of Galicia the matter had been comparatively easy.  I had then been concerned with the outward manifestation of war—­cannon, cholera, shell, and the green glittering trees of the forest itself.  But the war had made progress since then.  It had advanced out of material things into the very souls of men.  It was no longer the forest of bark and tinder with which the chiefs of this world had to deal, but, to adapt the Russian proverb itself, “with the dark forest of the hearts of men.”

How much more baffling and intangible this new forest, and how deeply serious a business now for those who were still thoughtlessly and selfishly juggling with human affairs.

“There is no ammunition,” I remember crying desperately in Galicia.  We had moved further than the question of ammunition now.

I had a strange dream that night.  I saw my old forest of two years before—­the very woods of Buchatch with the hot painted leaves, the purple slanting sunlight, the smell, the cries, the whirr of the shell.  But in my dream the only inhabitant of that forest was Markovitch.  He was pursued by some animal.  What beast it was I could not see, always the actual vision was denied to me, but I could hear it plunging through the thickets, and once I caught a glimpse of a dark crouching body like a shadow against the light.

But Markovitch I saw all the time, sweating with heat and terror, his clothes torn, his eyes inflamed, his breath coming in desperate pants, turning once and again as though he would stop and offer defiance, then hasting on, his face and hands scratched and bleeding.  I wanted to offer him help and assistance, but something prevented me; I could not get to him.  Finally he vanished from my sight and I was left alone in the painted forest....

All the next morning I sat and wondered what I had better do, and at last I decided that I would go and see Henry Bohun.

I had not seen Bohun for several weeks.  I myself had been, of late, less to the flat in the English Prospect, but I knew that he had taken my advice that he should be kind to Nicholas Markovitch with due British seriousness, and that he had been trying to bring some kind of relationship about.  He had even asked Markovitch to dine alone with him, and Markovitch, although he declined the invitation was, I believe, greatly touched.

So, about half-past one, I started off for Bohun’s office on the Fontanka.  I’ve said somewhere before, I think, that Bohun’s work was in connection with the noble but uphill task of enlightening the Russian public as to the righteousness of the war, the British character, and the Anglo-Russian alliance.  I say “uphill,” because only a few of the real population of Russia showed the slightest desire to know anything whatever about any country outside their own.  Their interest is in ideas not in boundaries—­and what I mean by “real”