He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room.  Everything was ordinary enough.  Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking very quietly up and down the farther end of the room.  He wore faded blue carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately.  Everything was the same as it had always been.  The storm that had raged all day had now died down, and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big table with the fading table-cloth, on the old brown carpet, on the picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov’s musical-box, on the old knick-knacks and the untidy shelf of books.  (Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were still there.  It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long day’s efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenieff’s House of Gentle-folks, and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.

He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the newspaper.  He caught, at first, only portions of sentences.  I am writing this, of course, from Bohun’s account of it, and I cannot therefore quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the Front.

“There!” Semyonov would say, pausing.  “Now, Nicholas...  What do you say to that?  A nice state of things.  The Colonel was murdered, of course, although our friend the Retch doesn’t put it quite so bluntly.  The Novaya Jezn of course highly approves.  Here’s another....”  This went on for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov’s voice was Markovitch’s padding steps.  “Ah! here’s another bit!...  Now what about that, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution?  See what they’ve been doing near Riga!  It says....”

“Can’t you leave it alone, Alexei?  Keep your paper to yourself!”

These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different from Markovitch’s ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warning blow on the shoulder.

“There’s gratitude—­when I’m trying to interest you!  How childish, too, not to face the real situation!  Do you think you’re going to improve things by pretending that anarchy doesn’t exist?  So soon, too, after your beautiful Revolution!  How long is it?  Let me see...  March, April... yes, just about six weeks....  Well, well!”

“Leave me alone, Alexei!...  Leave me alone!”

Bohun had with that such a sense of a superhuman effort at control behind the words that the pain of it was almost intolerable.  He wanted, there and then, to have left the room.  It would have been better for him had he done so.  But some force held him in his chair, and, as the scene developed, be felt as though his sudden departure would have laid too emphatic a stress on the discomfort of it.