Bohun considered.  “I’ve seen very little of him,” he said at last.  “I think he avoids me now.  He’s such a weird bird that it’s impossible to tell of what he’s really thinking.  I know he was pleased when I asked him to dine with me at the Bear the other night.  He looked most awfully pleased.  But he wouldn’t come.  It was as though he suspected that I was laying a trap for him.”

“But what have you noticed about him otherwise?”

“Well, I’ve seen very little of him.  He’s sulky just now.  He suspected Lawrence, of course—­always after that night of Nina’s party.  But I think that he’s reassured again.  And of course it’s all so ridiculous, because there’s nothing to suspect, absolutely nothing—­is there?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I answered firmly.

He sighed with relief.  “Oh, you don’t know how glad I am to hear that,” he said.  “Because, although I’ve known that it was all right, Vera’s been so odd lately that I’ve wondered—­you know how I care about Vera and—­”

“How do you mean—­odd?” I sharply interrupted.

“Well—­for instance—­of course I’ve told nobody—­and you won’t tell any one either—­but the other night I found her crying in the flat, sitting up near the table, sobbing her heart out.  She thought every one was out—­I’d been in my room and she hadn’t known.  But Vera, Durward—­Vera of all people!  I didn’t let her see me—­she doesn’t know now that I heard her.  But when you care for any one as I care for Vera, it’s awful to think that she can suffer like that and one can do nothing.  Oh, Durward, I wish to God I wasn’t so helpless!  You know before I came out to Russia I felt so old; I thought there was nothing I couldn’t do, that I was good enough for anybody.  And now I’m the most awful ass.  Fancy, Durward!  Those poems of mine—­I thought they were wonderful.  I thought—­”

He was interrupted by a sudden sharp crackle like a fire bursting into a blaze quite close at hand.  We both sprang to the windows, threw them open (they were not sealed, for some unknown reason), and rushed out on to the balcony.  The scene in front of us was just what it had been before—­the bubble clouds were still sailing lazily before the blue, the skaters were still hovering on the ice, the cart of wood that I had noticed was vanishing slowly into the distance.  But from the Liteiny—­just over the bridge—­came a confused jumble of shouts, cries, and then the sharp, unmistakable rattle of a machine-gun.  It was funny to see the casual life in front of one suddenly pause at that sound.  The doll-like skaters seemed to spin for a moment and then freeze; one figure began to run across the ice.  A small boy came racing down our street shouting.  Several men ran out from doorways and stood looking up into the sky, as though they thought the noise had come from there.  The sun was just setting; the bubble clouds were pink, and windows flashed fire.  The rattle of the machine-gun suddenly stopped, and there was a moment’s silence when the only sound in the whole world was the clatter of the wood-cart turning the corner.  I could see to the right of me the crowds in the Nevski, that had looked like the continual unwinding of a ragged skein of black silk, break their regular movement and split up like flies falling away from an opening door.