There was still a great deal of the baby in Henry, and ghosts and giants and scaly-headed monsters were not incredibilities to his young imagination.  As he left the main thoroughfare and turned down past the widening docks, he suddenly knew that he was terrified.  There had been stories of wild attacks on rich strangers, sand-bagging and the rest, often enough, but it was not of that kind of thing that he was afraid.  He told me afterwards that he expected to see “long thick crawling creatures” creeping towards him over the ice.  He continually turned round to see whether some one were following him.  When he crossed the tumbledown bridge that led to my island it seemed that he was absolutely alone in the whole world.  The masts of the ships dim through the cold mist were like tangled spiders’ webs.  A strange hard red moon peered over the towers and chimneys of the distant dockyard.  The ice was limitless, and of a dirty grey pallor, with black shadows streaking it.  My island must have looked desolate enough, with its dirty snow-heaps, old boards and scrap-iron and tumbledown cottages.

Again, as on his first arrival in Petrograd, Henry was faced by the solemn fact that events are so often romantic in retrospect, but grimly realistic in experience.  He reached my lodging and found the door open.  He climbed the dark rickety stairs and entered my sitting-room.  The blinds were not drawn, and the red moon peered through on to the grey shadows that the ice beyond always flung.  The stove was not burning, the room was cold and deserted.  Henry called my name and there was no answer.  He went into my bedroom and there was no one there.  He came back and stood there listening.

He could hear the creaking of some bar beyond the window and the melancholy whistle of a distant train.

He was held there, as though spellbound.  Suddenly he thought that he heard some one climbing the stairs.  He gave a cry, and that was answered by a movement so close to him that it was almost at his elbow.

“Who’s there?” he cried.  He saw a shadow pass between the moon and himself.  In a panic of terror he cried out, and at the same time struck a match.  Some one came towards him, and he saw that it was Markovitch.

He was so relieved to find that it was a friend that he did not stop to wonder what Markovitch should be doing hiding in my room.  It afterwards struck him that Markovitch looked odd.  “Like a kind of conspirator, in old shabby Shuba with the collar turned up.  He looked jolly ill and dirty, as though he hadn’t slept or washed.  He didn’t seem a bit surprised at seeing me there, and I think he scarcely realised that it was me.  He was thinking of something else so hard that he couldn’t take me in.”

“Oh, Bohun!” he said in a confused way.

“Hullo, Nicolai Leontievitch,” Bohun said, trying to be unconcerned.  “What are you doing here?”

“Came to see Ivan Andreievitch,” he said.  “Wasn’t here; I was going to write to him.”