"And I hope you also will find your way to me sometime,"

I added. "It's an out-of-place grimy spot, I'm afraid. You might bring
Lawrence round one evening."

Soon after that, feeling that I could do no more towards retrieving an
evening definitely lost, I departed. At the last I caught Markovitch's
eye. He seemed to be watching for something. A new invention perhaps. He
was certainly an unhappy man.



VIII

I was to meet Jerry Lawrence sooner than I had expected. And it was in
this way.

Two days after the evening that I have just described I was driven to go
and see Vera Michailovna. I was driven, partly by my curiosity, partly
by my depression, and partly by my loneliness. This same loneliness was,
I believe, at this time beginning to affect us all. I should be
considered perhaps to be speaking with exaggeration if I were to borrow
the title of one of Mrs. Oliphant's old-fashioned and charming novels
and to speak of Petrograd as already "A Beleaguered City"--beleaguered,
moreover, in very much the same sense as that other old city was. From
the very beginning of the war Petrograd was isolated--isolated not by
the facts of the war, its geographical position or any of the obvious
causes, but simply by the contempt and hatred with which it was
regarded. From very old days it was spoken of as a German town. "If you