“Ah,—­all very well—­just wait until you see ‘Masquerade.’”

These manifestations of the artistic spirit had not been very numerous of late in Petrograd.  At the beginning of the war there had been many cabarets—­“The Cow,” “The Calf,” “The Dog,” “The Striped Cat”—­and these had been underground cellars, lighted by Chinese lanterns, and the halls decorated with Futurist paintings by Yakkolyeff or some other still more advanced spirit.  It seemed strange to me as I dressed that evening.  I do not know how long it was since I had put on a dinner-jacket.  With the exception of that one other visit to Baron Wilderling this seemed to be my one link with the old world, and it was curious to feel its fascination, its air of comfort and order and cleanliness, its courtesy and discipline.  “I think I’ll leave these rooms,” I thought as I looked about me, “and take a decent flat somewhere.”

It is a strange fact, behind which there lies, I believe, some odd sort of moral significance, that I cannot now recall the events of that evening in any kind of clear detail.  I remember that it was bitterly cold, with a sky that was flooded with stars.  The snow had a queer metallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see now the Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of the very smack of our horses’ hoofs as my sleigh sped along—­as though, silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge.  It was all light and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frosted green, and even the black crowds that thronged the Nevski pavements shot with colour.

Somewhere in one of Shorthouse’s stories—­in The Little Schoolmaster Mark, I think—­he gives a curious impression of a whirling fantastic crowd of revellers who evoke by their movements some evil pattern in the air around them, and the boy who is standing in their midst sees this dark twisted sinister picture forming against the gorgeous walls and the coloured figures until it blots out the whole scene and plunges him into darkness.  I will not pretend that on this evening I discerned anything sinister or ominous in the gay scene that the Alexandra Theatre offered me, but I was nevertheless weighed down by some quite unaccountable depression that would not let me alone.  For this I can see now that Lawrence was very largely responsible.  When I met him and the Wilderlings in the foyer of the theatre I saw at once that he was greatly changed.

The clear open expression of his eyes was gone; his mind was far away from his company—­and it was as though I could see into his brain and watch the repetition of the old argument occurring again and again and again with always the same questions and answers, the same reproaches, the same defiances, the same obstinacies.  He was caught by what was perhaps the first crisis of his life.  He had never been a man for much contact with his fellow-beings, he had been aloof and reserved, generous in his judgements of others, severe and narrow in his judgement of himself.  Above all, he had been proud of his strength....