He had.

“What do you think of Discipline now?” I asked.

“Oh, Lord!” he blushed, “I was a young cuckoo.”

“And what about knowing all about Russia after a week?”

“No—­and that reminds me!” He drew his chair closer to my bed.  “That’s what I’ve come to talk about.  Do you mind if I gas a lot?”

“Gas as much as you like,” I said.

“Well, I can’t explain things unless I do....  You’re sure you’re not too seedy to listen?”

“Not a bit.  It does me good,” I told him.

“You see in a way you’re really responsible.  You remember, long ago, telling me to look after Markovitch when I talked all that rot about caring for Vera?”

“Yes—­I remember very well indeed.”

“In a way it all started from that.  You put me on to seeing Markovitch in quite a different light.  I’d always thought of him as an awfully dull dog with very little to say for himself, and a bit loose in the top-story too.  I thought it a terrible shame a ripping woman like Vera having married him, and I used to feel sick with him about it.  Then sometimes he’d look like the devil himself, as wicked as sin, poring over his inventions, and you’d fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps the best thing for everybody.

“Well, you explained him to me and I saw him different—­not that I’ve ever got very much out of him.  I don’t think that he either likes me or trusts me, and anyway he thinks me too young and foolish to be of any importance—­which I daresay I am.  He told me, by the way, the other day, that the only Englishman he thought anything of was yourself—­”

“Very nice of him,” I murmured.

“Yes, but not very flattering to me when I’ve spent months trying to be fascinating to him.  Anyhow, although I may be said to have failed in one way, I’ve got rather keen on the pursuit.  If I can’t make him like me I can at least study him and learn something.  That’s a leaf out of your book, Durward.  You’re always studying people, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

“Yes, of course you are.  Well, I’ll tell you frankly I’ve got fond of the old bird.  I don’t believe you could live at close quarters with any Russian, however nasty, and not get a kind of affection for him.  They’re so damned childish.”

“Oh yes, you could,” I said.  “Try Semyonov.”

“I’m coming to him in a minute,” said Bohun.  “Well, Markovitch was most awfully unhappy.  That’s one thing one saw about him at once—­unhappy of course because Vera didn’t love him and he adored her.  But there was more in it than that.  He let himself go one night to me—­the only time he’s ever talked to me really.  He was drunk a bit, and he wanted to borrow money off me.  But there was more in it than that.  He talked to me about Russia.  That seemed to have been his great idea when the war began that it was going to lead to the most marvellous patriotism all through Russia.