“I don’t remember noticing any of this at the moment, but it all comes back to me as soon as I begin to think of it—­and the room stank of scent!”

But of course it was the old man in the corner who mattered.  It was, I think, very significant of Lawrence’s character and his unEnglish-English tradition that the first thing that he felt was the pathos of it.  No other Englishman in Petrograd would have seen that at all.

Wilderling was crouched in the corner against a piece of gold Japanese embroidery.  He was in the shadow, away from the window, which was pushed open sufficiently to allow the muzzle of the rifle to slip between the woodwork and the pane.  The old man, his white hair disordered, his clothes dusty, and his hands grimy, crept forward just as Lawrence entered, fired down into the side-street, then moved swiftly back into his corner again.  He muttered to himself without ceasing in French, “Chiens!  Chiens!...  Chiens!” He was very hot, and he stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then he saw Lawrence.

“What do you want?” he asked, as though he didn’t recognize him.

Lawrence moved down the side of the room, avoiding the window.  He touched the little man’s arm.

“I say, you know,” he said, “this won’t do.”

Wilderling smelt of gunpowder, and he was breathing hard as though he had been running desperately.  He quivered when Lawrence touched him.

“Go away!” he said, “you mustn’t come here....  I’ll get them yet—­I tell you I’ll get them yet—­I tell you I’ll get them—­Let them dare...  Chiens...  Chiens...”  He jerked his rifle away from the window and began, with trembling fingers, to load it again.

Lawrence gripped his arm.  “When I did that,” he said, “it felt as though there wasn’t an arm there at all, but just a bone which I could break if I pressed a bit harder.”

“Come away!” he said.  “You damn fool—­don’t you see that it’s hopeless?”

“And I’d always been so respectful to him....” he added in parenthesis.

Wilderling hissed at him, saying no words, just drawing in his breath.

“I’ve got two of them,” he whispered suddenly.  “I’ll get them all.”

Then a bullet crashed through the window, burying itself in the opposite wall.

After that things happened so quickly that it was impossible to say in what order they occurred.  There was suddenly a tremendous noise in the flat.

“It was just as though the whole place was going to tumble about our ears.  All the pots and bottles began to jump about, and then another bullet came through, landed on the dressing-table, and smashed everything.  The looking-glass crashed, and the hair-oil was all over the place.  I rushed out to see what was happening in the hall....”

What “was happening” was that the soldiers had broken the hall door in.  Lawrence saw then a horrible thing.  One of the men rushed forward and stuck Andre, who was standing, paralysed, by the drawing-room door, in the stomach.  The old man cried out “just like a shot rabbit,” and stood there “for what seemed ages,” with the blood pouring out of his middle.