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The Secret City by Sir Hugh Walpole
page 11 of 459 (02%)
been spent in Russia. I did not, at the time when I made Jerry's
acquaintance at Cambridge, know this; had I realised it I would have
understood many things about him which puzzled me. He never alluded to
Russia, never apparently thought of it, never read a Russian book, had,
it seemed, no connection of any kind with any living soul in that
country.

Old Lawrence retired, and took a fine large ugly palace in Clapham to
end his days in....

Suddenly, after Lawrence had been in France for two years, had won the
Military Cross there and, as he put it, "was just settling inside his
skin," the authorities realised his Russian knowledge, and decided to
transfer him to the British Military Mission in Petrograd. His anger
when he was sent back to London and informed of this was extreme. He
hadn't the least desire to return to Russia, he was very happy where he
was, he had forgotten all his Russian; I can see him, saying very
little, looking like a sulky child and kicking his heel up and down
across the carpet.

"Just the man we want out there, Lawrence," he told me somebody said to
him; "keep them in order."

"Keep them in order!" That tickled his sense of humour. He was to laugh
frequently, afterwards, when he thought of it. He always chewed a joke
as a cow chews the cud.

So that he was in no pleasant temper when he met Bohun on the decks of
the _Jupiter_. That journey must have had its humours for any observer
who knew the two men. During the first half of it I imagine that Bohun
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