“At all events, it’s a success,” said his listener.  “One hears of it in every drawing-room.  Wonderful thing—­you don’t sneer at women.  I’m told you are almost on our side—­if not quite.  I’ve heard a passage read into French—­the woman of the twentieth century.  I rather liked it.”

“Not altogether?” said Otway, with humorous diffidence.

“Oh!  A woman never quite likes an ideal of womanhood which doesn’t quite fit her notion of herself.  But let us speak of the other thing, in the Nineteenth Century—­’The Pilgrimage to Kief.’  For life, colour, sympathy, I think it altogether wonderful.  I have heard Russians say that they couldn’t have believed a foreigner had written it.”

“That’s the best praise of all.”

“You mean to go on with this kind of thing?  You might become a sort of interpreter of the two nations to each other.  An original idea.  The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood.  All the same Mr. Otway, I’m bound to confess to you that I don’t like Russia.”

“No more do I,” returned Piers, in an undertone.  “But that only means, I don’t like the worst features of the Middle ages.  The Russian-speaking cosmopolitan whom you and I know isn’t Russia; he belongs to the Western Europe of to-day, his country represents Western Europe of some centuries ago.  Not strictly that, of course; we must allow for race; but it’s how one has to think of Russia.”

Again Mrs. Borisoff scrutinised him as he spoke, averting her eyes at length with an absent smile.

“Here comes my tutelary teapot,” she said, as a pretty maid-servant entered with a tray.  “A phrase I got from Irene, by the bye—­from Miss Derwent, who laughs at my carrying the thing about in my luggage.  She has clever little phrases of that sort, as you know.”

“Yes,” fell from Piers, dreamily.  “But it’s so long since I heard her talk.”

When he had received his cup of tea, and sipped from it, he asked with a serious look: 

“Will you tell me about her?”

“Of course I will.  But you must first tell me about yourself.  You were in business in London, I believe?”

“For about a year.  Then I found myself with enough to live upon, and came back to Russia.  I had lived at Odessa——­”

“You may presuppose a knowledge of what came before,” interrupted Mrs. Borisoff, with a friendly nod.

“I lived for several months with Korolevitch, on his estate near Poltava.  We used to talk—­heavens! how we talked!  Sometimes eight hours at a stretch.  I learnt a great deal.  Then I wandered up and down Russia, still learning.”

“Writing, too?”

“The time hadn’t come for writing.  Korolevitch gave me no end of useful introductions.  I’ve had great luck on my travels.”

“Pray, when did you make your studies of English women?”