little sleep and much liquor, was removed to a less exciting atmosphere.
With all his faults, he left faithful friends in the Markovitch flat,
and he, on his side, gave so enthusiastic an account of Mme.
Markovitch's attempts to restrain and modify his impetuosities that the
Embassy recommended her care and guidance to other young secretaries.
The war came and Vera Michailovna declared that she could have lodgers
no longer, and a terrible blow this was to Ivan Petrovitch. Then
suddenly, towards the end of 1916, she changed her mind and announced to
the Embassy that she was ready for any one whom they could send her.
Henry Bohun was offered, accepted, and prepared for. Ivan Petrovitch was
a happy man once more.

I never discovered that Markovitch was much consulted in these affairs.
Vera Michailovna "ran" the flat financially, industrially, and
spiritually. Markovitch meanwhile was busy with his inventions. I have,
as yet, said nothing about Nicolai Leontievitch's inventions. I
hesitate, indeed, to speak of them, although they are so essential, and
indeed important a part of my story. I hesitate simply because I do not
wish this narrative to be at all fantastic, but that it should stick
quite honestly and obviously to the truth. It is certain moreover that
what is naked truth to one man seems the falsest fancy to another, and
after all I have, from beginning to end, only my own conscience to
satisfy. The history of the human soul and its relation to divinity
which is, I think, the only history worth any man's pursuit must push
its way, again and again, through this same tangled territory which
infests the region lying between truth and fantasy; one passes suddenly
into a world that seems pure falsehood, so askew, so obscure, so twisted
and coloured is it. One is through, one looks back and it lies behind
one as the clearest truth. Such an experience makes one tender to other
men's fancies and less impatient of the vague and half-defined