The Markovitches, during those first weeks, left him to look after himself because they quite honestly believed that that was the thing that he would prefer.  Uncle Ivan tried to entertain him, but Bohun found him a bore, and with the ruthless intolerance of the very young, showed him so.  The family did not put itself out to please him in any way.  He had his room and his latchkey.  There was always coffee in the morning, dinner at half-past six, and the samovar from half-past nine onwards.  But the Markovitch family life was not turned from its normal course.  Why should it be?

And then he was laughed at.  Nina laughed at him.  Everything about him seemed to Nina ridiculous—­his cold bath in the morning, his trouser-press, the little silver-topped bottles on his table, the crease in his trousers, his shining neat hair, the pearl pin in his black tie, his precise and careful speech, the way that he said “Nu tak...  Spasebo... gavoreet... gariachy...”  She was never tired of imitating him; and very soon he caught her strutting about the dining-room with a man’s cap on her head, twisting a cane and bargaining with an Isvostchick—­this last because, only the evening before, he had told them with great pride of his cleverness in that especial direction.  The fun was good-natured enough, but it was, as Russian chaff generally is, quite regardless of sensitive feelings.  Nina chaffed everybody and nobody minded, but Bohun did not know this, and minded very much indeed.  He showed during dinner that evening that he was hurt, and sat over his cabbage soup very dignified and silent.  This made every one uncomfortable, although Vera told me afterwards that she found it difficult not to laugh.  The family did not make themselves especially pleasant, as Henry felt they ought to have done—­they continued the even tenor of their way.  He was met by one of those sudden cold horrible waves of isolated terror with which it pleases Russia sometimes to overwhelm one.  The snow was falling; the town was settling into a suspicious ominous quiet.  There was no light in the sky, and horrible winds blew round the corners of abandoned streets.  Henry was desperately homesick.  He would have cut and run, had there been any possible means of doing it.  He did not remember the wild joy with which he had heard, only a few weeks before, that he was to come to Petrograd.  He had forgotten even the splendours of Discipline.  He only knew that he was lonely and frightened and home-sick.  He seemed to be without a friend in the world.

But he was proud.  He confided in nobody.  He went about with his head up, and every one thought him the most conceited young puppy who had ever trotted the Petrograd streets.  And, although he never owned it even to himself, Jerry Lawrence seemed to him now the one friendly soul in all the world.  You could be sure that Lawrence would be always the same; he would not laugh at you behind your back, if he disliked something he would say so.  You