“I’m sorry, Vera Michailovna, that you can’t read English....”  Bohun’s careful voice was explaining, “Only Wells and Locke and Jack London....”

I heard Vera Michailovna’s voice.  Then Bohun again: 

“No, I write very slowly—­yes, I correct an awful lot....”

We stumbled amongst the darkness of the cobbles; where pools had been the ice crackled beneath our feet, then the snow scrunched....  I loved the sound, the sharp clear scent of the air, the pools of stars in the sky, the pools of ice at our feet, the blue like the thinnest glass stretched across the sky.  I felt the poignancy of my age, of the country where I was, of Bohun’s youth and confidence, of the war, of disease and death—­but behind it all happiness at the strange sense that I had to-night, that came to me sometimes from I knew not where, that the undercurrent of the river of life was stronger than the eddies and whirlpools on its surface, that it knew whither it was speeding, and that the purpose behind its force was strong and true and good....

“Oh,” I heard Bohun say, “I’m not really very young, Vera Michailovna.  After all, it’s what you’ve done rather than your actual years....”

“You’re older than you’ll ever be again, Bohun, if that’s any consolation to you,” I said.

We had arrived.  The cinema door blazed with light, and around it was gathered a group of soldiers and women and children, peering in at a soldiers’ band, which, placed on benches in a corner of the room, played away for its very life.  Outside, around the door were large bills announcing “The Woman without a Soul, Drama in four parts,” and there were fine pictures of women falling over precipices, men shot in bedrooms, and parties in which all the guests shrank back in extreme horror from the heroine.  We went inside and were overwhelmed by the band, so that we could not hear one another speak.  The floor was covered with sunflower seeds, and there was a strong smell of soldiers’ boots and bad cigarettes and urine.  We bought tickets from an old Jewess behind the pigeon-hole and then, pushing the curtain aside, stumbled into darkness.  Here the smell was different, being, quite simply that of human flesh not very carefully washed.  Although, as we stumbled to some seats at the back, we could feel that we were alone, it had the impression that multitudes of people pressed in upon us, and when the lights did go up we found that the little hall was indeed packed to its extremest limit.

No one could have denied that it was a cheerful scene.  Soldiers, sailors, peasants, women, and children crowded together upon the narrow benches.  There was a great consumption of sunflower seeds, and the narrow passage down the middle of the room was littered with fragments.  Two stout and elaborate policemen leaned against the wall surveying the public with a friendly if superior air.  There was a tremendous amount of noise.  Mingled with the strains of