The most notable figure in this assembly, and he certainly would have
been in most assemblies, was Nekrovitch himself. Nekrovitch was
essentially a great man; one of those men whom to know was to admire and
to love; a man of strong intellect, and of the strong personal magnetism
which is so frequently an adjunct of genius. Physically he was a huge
powerful man, so massive and striking in appearance that he suggested
comparison rather with some fact of nature--a rock, a vigorous forest tree
--than with another man. He was one of those rare men who, like mountains
in a landscape, suffice in themselves to relieve their environments,
whatever these may be, from all taint of meanness. He stood out from among
his guests the centre of conversation, of feeling, and of interest. He was
almost invariably engaged in eager conversation, pitched in a loud tone of
voice, broken at intervals when he listened to the other disputants, while
puffing the cigarettes which he was constantly rolling, and looking
intently out of his deep-set penetrating eyes.

Nekrovitch's wife, a Russian like himself, had been a student of medicine
at the Russian University until, along with her husband, she had been
compelled to take flight from the attentions of the Russian police. She
was a curly-headed brunette, with bright hazel eyes and a vivacious
manner; a very intelligent and highly "simpatica" woman, as the Italians
would put it.

Round Nekrovitch there always clustered an eager crowd of admirers and
intimates, discussing, disputing, listening, arguing. They were mostly
foreigners, of the shaggy though not unwashed persuasion, but two English
faces especially attracted notice. One belonged to a young woman, still on
the right side of thirty, dressed without exaggeration in the aesthetic
style, with a small but singularly intellectual head and an argumentative
manner, whom I knew as Miss Cooper. The other was a man of some