Suddenly, about seven o’clock, Nina came in.  She was tired, nervous, and unhappy.  The Revolution had not come to her as anything but a sudden crumbling of all the life that she had known and believed in.  She had had, that afternoon, to run down a side street to avoid a machine-gun, and afterwards on the Morskaia she had come upon a dead man huddled up in the snow like a piece of offal.  These things terrified her and she did not care about the larger issues.  Her life had been always intensely personal—­not selfish so much as vividly egoistic through her vitality.  And now she was miserable, not because she was afraid for her own safety, but because she was face to face, for the first time, with the unknown and the uncertain.

She came in, sat down at the table, put her head into her arms and burst into tears.  She must have looked a very pathetic figure with her little fur hat askew, her hair tumbled—­like a child whose doll is suddenly broken.

Vera was at her side in a moment.  She put her arms around her.

“Nina, dear, what is it?...  Has somebody hurt you?  Has something happened?  Is anybody—­killed?”

“No!” Nina sobbed.  “Nobody—­nothing—­only—­I’m frightened.  It all looks so strange.  The streets are so funny, and—­there was—­a dead man on the Morskaia.”

“You shouldn’t have gone out, dear.  I oughtn’t to have let you.  But now we can just be cosy together.  Sacha’s gone out.  There’s no one here but ourselves.  We’ll have supper and make ourselves comfortable.”

Nina looked up, staring about her.  “Has Sacha gone out?  Oh, I wish she hadn’t!...  Supposing somebody came.”

“No one will come.  Who could?  No one wants to hurt us! I’ve been here all the afternoon, and no one’s come near the flat.  If anybody did come we’ve only got to telephone to Nicholas.  He’s with Rozanov all the afternoon.”

“Nicholas!” Nina repeated scornfully.  “As though he could help anybody.”  She looked up.  Vera told me afterwards that it was at that moment, when Nina looked such a baby with her tumbled hair and her flushed cheeks stained with tears, that she realised her love for her with a fierceness that for a moment seemed to drown even her love for Lawrence.  She caught her to her and hugged her, kissing her again and again.

But Nina was suspicious.  There were many things that had to be settled between Vera and herself.  She did not respond, and Vera let her go.  She went into her room, to take off her things.

Afterwards they lit the samovar and boiled some eggs and put the caviare and sausage and salt fish and jam on the table.  At first they were silent, and then Nina began to recover a little.