No one else seemed to be making any very active efforts, and at last he decided that he must do something himself.  He discovered Grogoff’s address, went to the Gagarinskaya and looked up at the flat, hung about a bit in the hope of seeing Nina.  Then he did see her at Rozanov’s party, and this, although he said nothing to me about it at the time, had a tremendous effect on him.  He thought she looked “awful.”  All the joy had gone from her; she was years older, miserable, and defiant.  He didn’t speak to her, but from that night he made up his mind.  Rozanov’s party may be said to have been really the turning-point of his life.  It was the night that he came out of his shell, grew up, faced the world—­and it was the night that he discovered that he cared about Nina.

The vision of her poor little tired face, her “rather dirty white dress,” her “grown-up” hair, her timidity and her loneliness, never left him for a moment.  All the time that I thought he was occupied only with the problem of Markovitch and Semyonov, he was much more deeply occupied with Nina.  So unnaturally secretive can young men be!

At last he decided on a plan.  He chose the Monday, the day of the Bourse meeting, because he fancied that Grogoff would be present at that and he might therefore catch Nina alone, and because he and his fellow-propagandists would be expected also at the meeting and he would therefore be free of his office earlier on that afternoon.  He had no idea at all how he would get into the flat, but he thought that fortune would be certain to favour him.  He always thought that.

Well, fortune did.  He left the office and arrived in the Gagarinskaya about half-past five in the evening.  He walked about a little, and then saw a bearded tall fellow drive up in an Isvostchick.  He recognised this man as Lenin, the soul of the anti-Government party, and a man who was afterwards to figure very prominently in Russia’s politics.  This fellow argued very hotly with the Isvostchick about his fare, then vanished through the double doors.  Bohun followed him.  Outside Grogoff’s flat Lenin waited and rang the bell.  Bohun waited on the floor below; then, when he heard the door open, he noiselessly slipped up the stairs, and, as Lenin entered, followed behind him whilst the old servant’s back was turned helping Lenin with his coat.  He found, as he had hoped, a crowd of cloaks and a Shuba hanging beside the door in the dark corner of the wall.  He crept behind these.  He heard Lenin say to the servant that, after all, he would not take off his coat, as he was leaving again immediately.  Then directly afterwards Grogoff came into the hall.

That was the moment of crisis.  Did Grogoff go to the rack for his coat and all was over; a very unpleasant scene must follow—­a ludicrous expulsion, a fling or two at the amiable habits of thieving and deceit on the part of the British nation, and any hope of seeing Nina ruined perhaps for ever.  Worst of all, the ignominy of it!  No young man likes to be discovered hidden behind a coat-rack, however honest his original intentions!