His heart beat to suffocation as he peeped between the coats....  Grogoff was already wearing his own overcoat.  It was, thank God, too warm an evening for a Shuba.  The men shook hands, and Grogoff saying something rather deferentially about the meeting, Lenin, in short, brusque tones, put him immediately in his place.  Then they went out together, the door closed behind them, and the flat was as silent as an aquarium.  He waited for a while, and then, hearing nothing, crept into the hall.  Perhaps Nina was out.  If the old servant saw him she would think him a burglar and would certainly scream.  He pushed back the door in front of him, stepped forward, and almost stepped upon Nina!

She gave a little cry, not seeing whom it was.  She was looking very untidy, her hair loose down her back, and a rough apron over her dress.  She looked ill, and there were heavy black lines under her eyes as though she had not slept for weeks.

Then she saw who it was and, in spite of herself, smiled.

“Genry!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said in a whisper, closing the door very softly behind him.  “Look here, don’t scream or do anything foolish.  I don’t want that old woman to catch me.”

He has no very clear memory of the conversation that followed.  She stood with her back to the wall, storing at him, and every now and again taking up a corner of her pinafore and biting it.  He remembered that action of hers especially as being absurdly childish.  But the overwhelming impression that he had of her was of her terror—­terror of everything and of everybody, of everybody apparently except himself.  (She told him afterwards that he was the only person in the world who could have rescued her just then because she simply couldn’t be frightened of some one at whom she’d laughed so often.) She was terrified, of course, of Grogoff—­she couldn’t mention his name without trembling—­but she was terrified also of the old servant, of the flat, of the room, of the clock, of every sound or hint of a sound that there was in the world.  She to be so frightened!  She of whom he would have said that she was equal to any one or anything!  What she must have been through during those weeks to have brought her to this!...  But she told him very little.  He urged her at once that she must come away with him, there and then, just as she was.  She simply shook her head at that.  “No...  No...  No...” she kept repeating.  “You don’t understand.”

“I do understand,” he answered, always whispering, and with one ear on the door lest the old woman should hear and come in.  “We’ve got very little time,” he said.  “Grogoff will never let you go if he’s here.  I know why you don’t come back—­you think we’ll all look down on you for having gone.  But that’s nonsense.  We are all simply miserable without you.”