She turned and almost ran out of the room.
"Well, you see," said Grogoff smiling lazily from the sofa.
"It doesn't settle it," I answered. "We shall never rest until we have got her back."
But, I had to go. There was nothing more just then to be done.
On my return I found Vera alone waiting for me with restless impatience.
"Well?" she said eagerly. Then when she saw that I was alone her face clouded.
"It's no good," I said at once. "Not for the moment. She's made up her mind. It's not because she loved him nor, I think, for anything very much that her uncle said. She's got some idea in her head. Perhaps you can explain it."
"What was it?" But even as she asked the question she seemed to fear the answer, because she turned away from me.
"She told me to tell you that she saw what happened on the afternoon of the Thursday in Revolution week. She said that then you would understand."
Vera looked at me with the strangest expression of defiance, fear, triumph.
"They can all know. I don't care. I want them to know. Nina can tell them all."
"Oh, you'll hear with the rest. Uncle Alexei has done this. He told Nina because he hates me. He won't rest until he ruins us all. But I don't care. He can't take from me what I've got. He can't take from me what I've got.... But we must get her back, Ivan Andreievitch. She _must_ come back--"
Nicholas came in and then Semyonov and then Bohun.
Bohun, drawing me aside, whispered to me: "Can I come and see you? I must ask your advice--"
"To-morrow evening," I told him, and left.
Next day I was ill again. I had I suppose done too much the day before. I was in bed alone all day. My old woman had suddenly returned without a word of explanation or excuse. She had not, I am sure, even got so far as the Moscow Province. I doubt whether she had even left Petrograd. I asked her no questions. I could tell of course that she had been drinking. She was a funny old creature, wrinkled and yellow and hideous, very little different in any way from a native in the wilds of Central Africa. The savage in her liked gay colours and trinkets, and she would stick flowers in her hair and wear a tinkling necklace of bright red and blue beads. She had a mangy dog, hairless in places and rheumy at the eyes, who was all her passion, and this creature she would adore, taking it to sleep with her, talking to it by the hour together, pulling its tail and twisting its neck so that it growled with rage--and then, when it growled, she, too, would make strange noises as though sympathising with it.