“Good heavens!  You don’t say so!  Why should they interfere with us?”

“Oh, rich, you know, and that kind of thing.  And then we’re Englishmen.  They’ll clear out all the English.”

“Oh, I’m not really English.  My mother was Russian.  I could show them my papers....”

Bohun laughed.  “I’m only kidding you, Watchett,” he said.  “We’re safe enough.  Look, there’s not a soul about!” We were at the corner of the Moika now; all was absolutely quiet.  Two women and a man were standing on the bridge talking together.  A few stars clustered above the bend of the Canal seemed to shift and waver ever so slightly through a gathering mist, like the smoke of blowing candles.

“It seems all right,” said the merchant, sniffing the air suspiciously as though he expected to smell blood.  We turned towards the Morskaia.  One of the women detached herself from the group and came to us.

“Don’t go down the Morskaia,” she said, whispering, as though some hostile figure were leaning over her shoulder.  “They’re firing round the Telephone Exchange.”  Even as she spoke I heard the sharp clatter of the machine-gun break out again, but now very close, and with an intimate note as though it were the same gun that I had heard before, which had been tracking me down round the town.

“Do you hear that?” said the merchant.

“Come on,” said Bohun.  “We’ll go down the Moika.  That seems safe enough!”

How strangely in the flick of a bullet the town had changed!  Yesterday every street had been friendly, obvious, and open; they were now no longer streets, but secret blind avenues with strange trees, fantastic doors, shuttered windows, a grinning moon, malicious stars, and snow that lay there simply to prevent every sound.  It was a town truly beleaguered as towns are in dreams.  The uncanny awe with which I moved across the bridge was increased when the man with the women turned towards me, and I saw that he was—­or seemed to be—­that same grave bearded peasant whom I had seen by the river, whom Henry had seen in the Cathedral, who remained with one, as passing strangers sometimes do, like a symbol or a message or a threat.

He stood, with the Nevski behind him, calm and grave, and even it seemed a little amused, watching me as I crossed.  I said to Bohun, “Did you ever see that fellow before?”

Bohun turned and looked.

“No,” he said.

“Don’t you remember?  The man that first day in the Kazan?”

“They’re all alike,” Bohun said.  “One can’t tell....”

“Oh, come on,” said the merchant.  “Let’s get to the Astoria.”

We started down the Moika, past that faded picture-shop where there are always large moth-eaten canvases of cornfields under the moon and Russian weddings and Italian lakes.  We had got very nearly to the little street with the wooden hoardings when the merchant gripped my arm.