Now he was threatened by something stronger than himself.  He could have managed it so long as he was aware only of his love for Vera....  Now, when, since Nina’s party, he knew that also Vera loved him, he had to meet the tussle of his life.

That, at any rate, is the kind of figure that I give to his mood that evening.  He has told me much of what happened to him afterwards, but nothing of that particular night, except once.  “Do you remember that ‘Masquerade’ evening?...  I was in hell that night....” which, for Lawrence, was expressive enough.

Both the Baron and his wife were in great spirits.  The Baron was more than ever the evocation of the genius of elegance and order; he seemed carved out of some coloured ivory, behind whose white perfection burnt a shining resolute flame.

His clothes were so perfect that they would have expressed the whole of him even though his body had not been there.  He was happy.  His eyes danced appreciatively; he waved his white gloves at the scene as though blessing it.

“Of course, Mr. Durward,” he said to me, “this is nothing compared with what we could do before the war—­nevertheless here you see, for a moment, a fragment of the old Petersburg—­Petersburg as it shall be, please God, again one day....”

I do not in the least remember who was present that evening, but it was, I believe, a very distinguished company.  The lights blazed, the jewels flashed, and the chatter was tremendous.  The horseshoe-shaped seats behind the stalls clustered in knots and bunches of colour under the great glitter of electricity about the Royal Box.  Artists—­Somoff and Benois and Dobujinsky; novelists like Sologub and Merejkowsky; dancers like Karsavina—­actors from all over Petrograd—­they were there, I expect, to add criticism and argument to the adulation of friends and of the carelessly observant rich Jews and merchants who had come simply to display their jewellery.  Petrograd, like every other city in the world, is artistic only by the persistence of its minority.

I’m sure that there were Princesses and Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses for any one who needed them, and it was only in the gallery where the students and their girl-friends were gathered that the name of Lermontov was mentioned.  The name of the evening was “Meyerhold,” the gentleman responsible for the production.  At last the Event that had been brewing ceaselessly for the last ten years—­ever since the last Revolution in fact—­was to reach creation.  The moment of M. Meyerhold’s life had arrived—­the moment, had we known it, of many other lives also; but we did not know it.  We buzzed and we hummed, we gasped and we gaped, we yawned and we applauded; and the rustle of gold tissue, the scent of gold leaf, the thick sticky substance of gold paint, filled the air, flooded the arena, washed past us into the street outside.  Meanwhile M. Meyerhold, white, perspiring, in his shirt-sleeves with his collar loosened and his hair damp, is in labour behind the gold tissue to produce the child of his life... and Behold, the Child is produced!