It was the evening of Rasputin’s murder.  The town of course talked of nothing else—­it had been talking, without cessation, since two o’clock that afternoon.  The dirty, sinister figure of the monk with his magnetic eyes, his greasy beard, his robe, his girdle, and all his other properties, brooded gigantic over all of us.  He was brought into immediate personal relationship with the humblest, most insignificant creature in the city, and with him incredible shadows and shapes, from Dostoeffsky, from Gogol, from Lermontov, from Nekrasov—­from whom you please—­all the shadows of whom one is eternally subconsciously aware in Russia—­faced us and reminded us that they were not shadows but realities.

The details of his murder were not accurately known—­it was only sure that, at last, after so many false rumours of attempted assassination, he was truly gone, and this world would be bothered by his evil presence no longer.

Pictures formed in one’s mind as one listened.  The day was fiercely cold, and this seemed to add to the horror of it all—­to the Hoffmannesque fantasy of the party, the lights, the supper, and the women, the murder with its mixture of religion and superstition and melodrama, the body flung out at last so easily and swiftly, on to the frozen river.  How many souls must have asked themselves that day—­“Why, if this is so easy, do we not proceed further?  A man dies more simply than you thought—­only resolution... only resolution.”

I know that that evening I found it impossible to remain in my lonely rooms; I went round to the Markovitch flat.  I found Vera Michailovna and Bohun preparing to go out; they were alone in the flat.  He looked at me apprehensively.  I think that I appeared to him at that time a queer, moody, ill-disposed fellow, who was too old to understand the true character of young men’s impetuous souls.  It may be that he was right....

“Will you come with us, Ivan Andreievitch?” Vera Michailovna asked me.  “We’re going to the little cinema on Ekateringofsky—­a piece of local colour for Mr. Bohun.”

“I’ll come anywhere with you,” I said.  “And we’ll talk about Rasputin.”

Bohun was only too ready.  The affair seemed to his romantic soul too good to be true.  Because we none of us knew, at that time, what had really happened, a fine field was offered for every rumour and conjecture.

Bohun had collected some wonderful stories.  I saw that, apart from Rasputin, he was a new man—­something had happened to him.  It was not long before I discovered that what had happened was that Vera Michailovna had been kind to him.  Vera’s most beautiful quality was her motherliness.  I do not intend that much-abused word in any sentimental fashion.  She did not shed tears over a dirty baby in the street, nor did she drag decrepit old men into the flat to give them milk and fifty kopecks,—­but let some one appeal to the strength and bravery in her, and she responded magnificently.  I believe that