I had never before seen Vera Michailovna so fine and independent and, at the same time, so kind and gracious.  She was dressed in white, very plain and simple, her shining black hair piled high on her head, her kind, good eyes watching every one and everything to see that all were pleased.  She, too, was happy to-night, but happy also in a strange, subdued, quiescent way, and I felt, as I always did about her, that her soul was still asleep and untouched, and that much of her reliance and independence came from that.  Uncle Ivan was in his smart clothes, his round face very red and he wore his air of rather ladylike but inoffensive superiority.  He stood near the table with the “Zakuska,” and his eyes rested there.  I do not now remember many of the Markovitch and Semyonov relations.  There was a tall thin young man, rather bald, with a short black moustache; he was nervous and self-assertive, and he had a high, shrill voice.  He talked incessantly.  There were several delightful, middle-aged women, quiet and ready to be pleased with everything—­the best Russian type of all perhaps, women who knew life, who were generously tolerant, kind-hearted, with a quiet sense of humour and no nonsense about them.  There was one fat red-faced man in a very tight black coat, who gave his opinion always about food and drink.  He was from Moscow—­his name Paul Leontievitch Rozanov—­and I met him on a later occasion of which I shall have to tell in its place.  Then there were two young girls who giggled a great deal and whispered together.  They hung around Nina and stroked her hair and admired her dress, and laughed at Boris Grogoff and any one else who was near them.

Nina was immensely happy.  She loved parties of course, and especially parties in which she was the hostess.  She was like a young kitten or puppy in a white frock, with her hair tumbling over her eyes.  She was greatly excited, and as joyous as though there were no war, and no afflicted Russia, and nothing serious in all the world.  This was the first occasion on which I suspected that Grogoff cared for her.  Outwardly he did nothing but chaff and tease her, and she responded in that quick rather sharp and very often crudely personal way at which foreigners for the first time in Russian company so often wonder.  Badinage with Russians so quickly passes to lively and noisy quarrelling, which in its turn so suddenly fades into quiet contented amiability that it is little wonder that the observer feels rather breathless at it all.  Grogoff was a striking figure, with his fine height and handsome head and bold eyes, but there was something about him that I did not like.  Immensely self-confident, he nevertheless seldom opened his mouth without betraying great ignorance about almost everything.  He was hopelessly ill-educated, and was the more able therefore from the very little knowledge that he had to construct a very simple Socialist creed in which the main statutes were that everything should