"I want Janchu," I said in perfectly good English, while he closed the door in my face.

"There's a spy outside our door," I whispered to Marie.

Panna Lolla came in with Janchu and turned on the light.

"There's a man outside our door, and two secret-service men at the pension door and two soldiers downstairs," she whispered excitedly in one breath. "No one can leave the pension, and they take the name and address of every one who comes here. And that woman was a spy. Antosha saw the chief go into her room and heard them talking together. And she left when they did."

I lay all night, half asleep, half awake, hearing the street noises clearly through the open windows. I cried a little from exhaustion and nerves, and then controlled myself, for my head began to ache, and who knew what would happen the next day? I had to keep strength to meet something that was coming. I had no idea what it was, but the uncertainty of the future only made it more ominous and threatening. That letter—In the darkness I saw the chief's watchful, narrow eyes, and the horn-rimmed spectacles of the friendly spy, and the stuffed portfolio.

Later.

Nothing has happened yet. We have our meals brought to us by Antosha, who tries to comfort us with extra large pickled cucumbers and portions of sour cream. We are allowed to send Panna Lolla downtown for cigarettes and books from the circulating library. Thank Heaven for books! With our nerves stretched to the snapping-point and a pinwheel of thoughts everlastingly spinning round in our heads, I think we should go mad except for books. It is very hot, but my body is always cool and damp, because I can't eat much, I suppose, and lie on a chaise longue motionless all day long. I can feel myself growing weak, and there is nothing to do but sit and wait.

Marie and I go over and over the whole thing, and finish at the point where we began. "But why?" We think it may be because Marie came to Bulgaria to visit me and brought me back here, and now we want to leave Russia together. The papers say that Bulgaria already has German officers over her troops. But I can't believe it. She is too independent. They say that she will certainly go with the Central Powers. That, too, is inconceivable. Perhaps, however, if it is true, and already known by the Russian authorities, the secret service is suspicious of our going back there, and of Marie's intention of sailing home from Dedeagatch, via Greece. What else could it be? How this uncertainty maddens us! Yet we are thankful for every day that passes and leaves us together. What will happen when they translate my letter? Boje moy! I hear a step outside the door, and my heart simply ceases to beat.

Pan Tchedesky to-day tiptoed into our room when the spy was having his lunch. He whispered to us that he had seen the English Consul, Mr. Douglas, and told him about our case. He begged us not to be discouraged, and to eat. He said that he almost wept when he saw our plates come back to the kitchen, untouched. How flabby and livid he looked, his vague, blurred eyes watery with tears! Yet we could have embraced him. He is the only person who has spoken to us.

The sun is golden on the old convent wall across the street. The convent is empty during the summer. Only the richest Court ladies send their daughters there to be educated, and the Dowager Empress visits them when she passes through Kiev. The trees in the garden are gold and green in the late afternoon sun. A little bell tinkles musically.

Below in the street some passing soldiers are singing. How fresh and strong and beautiful their untrained voices are. I wonder if they are off to the front, for each one carries a pack and a little tea-kettle swung on his back and a wooden spoon stuck along the side of his leg in his boot. Where will they be sent? Up north, to try and stem the German advance? To Riga? Where? The Germans are still advancing. Something is wrong somewhere. And still soldiers go to the front, singing. They are thrown into the breach. I can't help but think of the fields of Russian dead, unburied. Who has a chance to bury the dead on a retreat? There is nothing "decent" in it. Yet they say the retreat is "orderly." I wonder what that means?

At night when I try to sleep, I see the map of Russia as if it was printed on my eyeballs. It is so big and black with a thin red line of fire eating into it. America seems millions of miles away. I wish I could touch you just for a minute. If I could only feel your arms about me for one moment. The only way is not to think beyond this room and this minute.

RUTH.

August.

Dearests:—

Peter is here. Last night, about nine o'clock the door opened and he rushed into the room. I got to my feet on impulse, and then tried to brace myself and control my disordered reason, for, of course, I believed myself delirious. He stopped by the door long enough to throw down his suitcase, and in that instant I struggled fiercely to disbelieve my eyes. I was fighting myself. My legs trembled. But when I fell, his arms were around me, supporting me.

"Is it you? Is it you?" I don't know whether I said the words out loud or not, but I remember feeling the muscle in Peter's shoulder and wondering if I could have gone out of my head as much as that.

"What on earth has happened to you two?" he said at last.

"Let me sit down," I said, feeling suddenly very sick and faint, and a black spot in front of my eyes expanded all at once and shut out the swaying room.

"Why didn't you come to Bucharest?" he asked again.

"How white and thin you are. Isn't he, Marie?" I observed, the blackness gone from my eyes.

"Please answer me. What is the matter? You both look sick."

"We are under arrest for espionage," Marie and I suddenly burst out in chorus, and we both began talking as fast and as loud as we could.

"That's all right. I'll fix things for you," Peter reassured us when we stopped at last, out of breath. I suddenly wanted to hide him so they wouldn't get him as well as ourselves. He was so self-confident. What did he know of how things happened over here? He was talking and acting like a rational human being, which was sure proof he was in no position to cope with the Russian Secret Service. I felt a frantic desire to get him out of the room and make him promise that on no account would he admit he knew us.

"You must go at once," I whispered. "There's a spy at the door. If he sees you, they'll arrest you, too. Please go, go at once." And I tried to push him away.

"You poor things," he said, laughing. "There's no need to be frightened like this. Of course I won't go. Why should they arrest me?"

"Why should they have arrested us? Oh, you don't know." My teeth were chattering.

"Now, look here," he said seriously. "You've been alone and scared, and I'm sure you haven't eaten anything for days. Now, don't think about this any more. I'll get you out in no time. Have you a cigarette, anybody?"

I sat back, and my body stopped shaking. Everything seemed very still. I had the distinct thought, "What is to come, will come," and I drew a deep breath that seemed to come from my toes. It was enough Peter was here, after all.

We talked till three in the morning. Peter had gone to Bucharest to meet us, and when we didn't arrive, he took the first train to Kiev. I began to believe in his bodily presence. Before he left to go back to his hotel, I had regained my conviction he was a match for even the Russian Secret Service.

Can you imagine how we feel to-day? We go tottering round the room, taking things up and putting them down again, in a nervous anxiety to do something. We chirp the rag-times popular in America two years ago. We feel as though we were just recovering from a sickness, with a pleasant bodily weakness like a convalescent's in the springtime. Peter brought me a bunch of red roses when he came over this morning. I am writing this while he is seeing Mr. Douglas, the English Consul.

So much love to you from

RUTH.

September.

Darlingest ones:—

It has been three weeks since our arrest, and to-day is the first time we have been allowed to leave the room and go outdoors. We are still under house-arrest, but we can go out in the garden, while two soldiers guard the entrance. Isn't it ludicrous? A gendarme came last night and announced with ponderous importance that we were to be permitted the liberty of the garden if we gave our word of honor not to try to escape. We signed two red-sealed documents, and so we can go into the garden while two soldiers with bayonets look to it that we don't go any farther.

Peter had to bully me into leaving my room this afternoon. I didn't want to get healthy. I had grown so used to the proportions of our rooms I hated to make the effort to adjust myself to any others. But Peter came back from his daily round of visits to the English Consul, and the Army Headquarters, and the office of Kiev's civil governor, and produced from his coat-pocket a rubber ball. We were to play ball out in the garden, he said. So, after some persuasion Marie and I went out into the garden with him. How weak I was. My legs trembled going downstairs, and I was exhausted when I reached the benches in the garden.

Janchu, seeing us, ran up joyfully and took his mother by the hand. "This is my mother," he said in Polish, looking around proudly at the other children who were playing there.

Every one looked at us curiously. A head appeared at every window in the big stone apartment house. I saw the two women spies who had undressed us. They were evidently employed as servants in some family, for one was ironing and the other fixing a roast for the oven. They, too, looked out at us. I felt hot and indignant and, yes, ashamed as though I had been guilty. I wanted to hide. I felt inadequate to life. People were too much for me. People—people, the living and the dead. What a weight of life! I could hardly control my tears. Weakness, I suppose, for the soles of my feet and my fingertips hurt me as though my nerves were bared to the touch.

I looked up over the garden-wall. The tree-tops were yellow. While we had been locked in our room, the season had changed. Autumn was upon us. I shivered. There was a lavender mist over the city dimming the radiance of the gold and silver church domes. How beautiful Kiev was! The church-bells were so mellow-toned; and the children's shrill laughter and cries as they played in the garden. But it tired me. Every impression seemed to bruise me.

Peter bought some little Polish cakes, and we had hot tea to cheer us up—three and four glasses of tea.

Good-night. Sometimes, when I think of you, I don't see all of you, but instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's hands and they are beautiful.

RUTH.

September.

Dearests:—

Every day now we go out into the garden. We play ball and play tag in the wind to get warm.

There is a private hospital at one end of our apartment house, supported by a wealthy Polish woman. Two or three times a week she visits the patients, young officers who go out into the garden with her and kiss her hand and talk and flirt. She sits on a garden-bench surrounded by her young men, a big woman in black, with a long black veil, talking vivaciously, using her hands in quick, expressive gestures, patting their cheeks, leaning forward to give their hands an impulsive squeeze. When she laughs, which is often, the black line of a mustache on her upper lip makes the white of her teeth whiter still. The days when she isn't there, the convalescents flirt with the nurses. There is nothing horrible about this hospital. The patients are only slightly wounded, and wear becoming bathrobes when they lounge round.

The window-ledges of the rooms are gay with flowers. Almost always a phonograph is going, "Carmen," or "Onegin," or "Pagliacci." Sometimes, Peter and I one-step to the music on the pavement outside, and the officers and nurses crowd to the windows and clap and cry, "Encore!" Often, after sundown, when the children have gone indoors, and we go out for a walk before dinner, we see a patient with a bandage around his head, perhaps, but both arms well enough to be clasping a pretty nurse in them. They laugh and we laugh. There is no cynicism about it. It's bigger than that, it seems to me.

Into the garden come many street musicians. They play and sing, and showers of kopecks rain down from the windows. Two little girls came a few days ago. They were Tziganes, barefooted, with gay petticoats and flowered shawls and dangling earrings. Their dark hair was short and curly. One of the children played a balalaika and sang in a broken, mournful voice that did not at all belong to her age. The other—who wore the prettiest dress, yellow, with a green and purple shawl—danced like a little marionette on a string, not an expression in her pointed, brown face, but every now and then accelerating the pace of her dance, and giving sharp, high cries. Then, suddenly, they stopped in the middle of a measure, and held out their aprons for money. A window on the ground floor opened and a very pretty woman leaned out. I have seen her many times. She is Polish, the daughter of a concierge, and now the mistress of a young Cossack, who is leaving shortly for the front. She has heavy, pale-yellow hair, wound around her head in thick braids, and she wears pearls, opaque like her skin. She beckoned the little girls into her room. They went eagerly. Soon I heard them singing there.

When we were with Dr. ——, from the Red Cross hospital this afternoon, a soldier came up to us and saluted. He was a miserable-looking creature, in a uniform too big for him. His face was unshaven, his beard gray and sparse, and his eyes red and blinking and full of pain. He slouched away again in a moment, his eyes staring down at the sidewalk under his feet.

"What did he want?" I asked.

"He wants brandy. He's leaving for the front to-morrow, and he asked me to write out a doctor's prescription so he could get a little brandy. Poor fellow. It was impossible, of course, but I'd have done it gladly. He said he'd been wounded and discharged, and had to go back to the front and leave his family, helpless, again. The second time must be so much worse than the first. You know what it's like out there."

RUTH.

September.

Darlingest ones:—

At last I have heard from the letter about the Jewish detention camp. The English Consul came to our rooms yesterday afternoon and said he was to act as interpreter for the head of the secret police. I was to be ready to answer his questions about eight o'clock that night. He told me to keep my temper and say as little as possible.

Shortly before eight the Consul and the chief came round together. We all sat down. I was quite calm. So often I had created my own terror of this moment that when it came I met it with relief. I even felt a sense of superiority over the chief of the secret service. I don't know why, I'm sure. Perhaps because I was no longer afraid of him. It was as though I had stuck my head under a pump of ice-cold water. I felt very clear-headed. I had a curious feeling that things were as they were and nothing I could say could change them.

"Are you a Jew?" he asked me first.

"No."

"Is your mother or father Jewish?"

"No. There is no Jewish blood in our family." I thought of Dad's Quakerism and smiled. I wondered what he would have said if he had been there.

"Then why have you such sympathy for them?" He looked at me narrowly, as though he had me there.

"Because they are suffering."

"Tck." He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in the most skeptical fashion.

He took up my letter, translated into Russian, and went through it. The whole thing was a farce. I answered the questions he asked me, but they didn't get us anywhere. Of course, everything I knew about the Jewish detention camp I had written in my letter. All I could do was to repeat what I had said there. And when he asked questions like, "Who said five old men had been killed along the way?" or, "How did you know throwing the bodies into the Dnieper had brought cholera into Kiev this summer?" I could only reply, "I was told it." "Who told you?" "I forget."

When he got up to go he said:—

"This letter makes your case a very serious one. Of course, we can't have such things as that published about us. Have you ever written before?"

I said, "No."

"You aren't reporting for any journal?"

I assured him it was only a letter I had written my mother and father.

"It goes out of my hands to-night. I shall hand it with a report to the Chief of the General Staff."

"When shall I hear from them?"

"They will let you know as soon as possible. It's unfortunate you should have written it. Otherwise, I could have settled the matter myself. As it is, it is a matter for the military authorities. Of course, such a letter written in the war zone, at a time like this—" He stopped himself. "Good-night. Good-night." He clicked his heels and bowed himself out of the room.

"Ouf!" we all said.

"Mrs. Pierce, promise me you won't put your pen to paper again while you are in Russia," the English Consul said, smiling.

"But isn't it ridiculous—absurd—disgusting!" I said.

"People are sent to Siberia for less," the Consul said. "But don't be frightened, Mrs. Pierce. It will come out all right."

"Of course. But when?"

"Seichas," he replied, smiling.

"Seichas." How I hate the expression. "Peter, you'd better cable for some more money. Heaven knows when we'll get out now," I said.

Peter sends love too. We are hungry for news from you, and we picture greedily the piles of letters we shall find waiting for us in Bulgaria. I try not to be anxious about you—But I wake up at night and this silence of months is like a dead weight on my heart.

RUTH.



IV

September.

Dear ones:—

The Germans are advancing. Nothing seems able to stop them. And every day brings new refugees from the country. They come in bewildered, frightened hordes and pass through the city streets, directed by gendarmes. They do as they are told. There is something dreadful in their submission and in the gentle alacrity with which they obey orders.

The other day we were waiting on a street corner for a line of the refugees' covered carts to pass. Suddenly, a woman, walking by a horse's head, collapsed. She sank on to the paving-stones like a bundle of dusty rags. People stopped to look, but no one touched her. The refugees behind left their carts and came up to see what had halted the procession. They, too, stood without touching her—peasants in dusty sheepskins, leaning on their staffs, looking down at the woman who had fallen out of their ranks. A gendarme elbowed his way through the crowd. He began to wave his arms and strike his boot with his whip, and shout at the weary-eyed, uncomprehending peasants. At last, two of them tucked their staffs under their arms and, leaning down, picked up the fainting woman. They carried her round to her cart and laid her down on the straw, her head on the lap of one of her children. For a moment the child looked down at her mother's white face, so strangely still, and then, terrified, suddenly jumped to her feet and her mother's head fell back against the boards with a dull thud. The children huddled together, crying. A peasant whipped up the little horse, and the procession began to move on.

There seems to be a horrible fear behind them that never lets them halt for long. The Germans—After all, they are human beings like the Russians. They, too, have their wounded and dying. People here speak of special red trains that leave the front continuously for Germany. These red trains are full of human beings whose brains have been smashed by the horrors of war. The German soldier is not supernatural. Then I think of those terrible red trains rushing through the dark, filled with raving maniacs, of men who have become like little children again. And yet when you hear, "The Germans are advancing! They are coming!" the German army seems to take on a supernatural aspect, to become a ruthless machine that drives everything before it in its advance, and in its wake leaves a country stripped of life—all the people and cottages rubbed off the face of the earth.

People here in Kiev feel the same terror of the German advance. Can nothing stop it? A panic has swept over the city that makes every one want to run away and hide. They crowd the square before the railway station and camp there for days, waiting to secure a place on the trains that leave for Petrograd or Odessa. For three weeks Peter has been waiting for his reservation to get to Petrograd. Our case drags on so. He wants to see the Ambassador personally. But the trains are packed with terrified people. Men leave their affairs and go down to the square with their families and baggage. They sleep on the cobble-stones, wrapped up in blankets, their heads on their bags. It is autumn, and the nights are cold and rainy, and the children cry in discomfort. I have seen the square packed with motionless, sleeping people, and in the morning I have seen them fight for places in the train, transformed by this unbearable terror of the Germans into beasts that trample each other to death. And when the train goes off, they settle back, waiting for their next chance. Perhaps some are so much nearer the station, but others are carried away wounded or dead. Who knows what they are capable of till they are so afraid?

My dressmaker's sister was a cripple. Fear had crept even into her sick-room. When Olga came to try on my dress, she fumbled and pinned things all wrong in her haste. I spoke to her sharply and asked her to be more careful. Then she burst into tears and told me about her sister. It appeared her sister was afraid to be left alone. Every time Olga left the room, her sister caught at her dress and made her promise not to desert her. She thought of the Germans day and night. She cursed Olga if she should ever run away and leave her to them. A few days later, Olga came again. She was so pale and thin it frightened me, and she didn't hurry nervously any more when she fitted me.

"What is it, Olga? You are sick," I said.

"My sister is dead. Last Saturday, it was late when I left you, and I stopped on the way home to get some herring for supper. I was later than usual, and when I got home I found my sister dead. She had died from fear. She thought I had deserted her. She had half fallen out of her chair as though she had tried to move. How could she think I would desert her ever? Haven't I taken care of her for fifteen years? But it was fear. She has been like one out of her mind since they have been so near Kiev. What will they do in Kiev? They say the Germans are only two days' march away!"

All day the church-bells have been ringing for special prayers. I went into one of the churches in the late afternoon. It was dark and filled with people who had come to pray for help to stop the Germans. There were soldiers and peasants and townspeople, all with their thoughts fixed on God. I cannot tell you how solemn it was. All the people united in thought against the common menace. Women in black, soldiers and officers with bands of black crepe round their sleeves, square, stolid-looking peasants, with tears running down their cheeks. They knelt on the stone flagging, their eyes turned toward the altar with its gold crucifix and jeweled ikons. The candle-flames only seemed to make the dimness more obscure. And the deep voice of the priest chanting in the darkness: all Russia seemed to be on its knees offering its faith as a bulwark against the Germans. When I turned to leave, I came face to face with an old woman. The tears were still wet on her cheeks, but she was smiling.

"Kiev is a holy city," she said. "God will protect the tombs of his holy Saints." And she brushed by, paying no more attention to me.

There are placards in all the banks, offering to give people the value of their jewels and silverware.

Extra pontoon bridges are thrown across the Dnieper, ready for the retreat of the Russian troops. Though there are lines of trenches and barbed-wire entanglements before the city, no effort will be made to defend it, as it would probably mean its destruction. I wonder what the Germans will do when they get here? They are human beings, but I can't help but think of Belgium, and then I am sick with fear. At other times, it seems the one way to bring our affair with the Secret Service to a finish. How strange it will be to have no longer a Russian army between the Germans and Kiev. No more a wall of flesh to protect us. Poor soldiers, without a round of ammunition, fighting with naked hands. They will cross the Dnieper to one side of the city, crowding, fighting, falling together. And the German cannon driving them on, and crashing into the city, sometimes, wiping out whole streets of townspeople. And then, the gray lines of the Germans running into Kiev. The thousands of blue-eyed Germans and their pointed helmets and guttural speech taking possession of everything.

As we came down the hill to-day, we saw great vans drawn up before the Governor's mansion. Soldiers were loading them with the rich furnishings of the house. Evidently, the Governor had no intention of letting his things fall into the Germans' hands. How strange it looked—the feverish haste with which the house was being emptied!

At the station a special train was waiting to take the Governor's things to a place of safety—and the crowds were waiting to escape with their lives! Now every one with any sort of a boat that will float is making a fortune taking the terrified townspeople down the river. There are, of course, horrible accidents, for the boats are overcrowded. One completely turned turtle with its load of men and women and children. And yet the Governor's things must be removed to a place of safety.

Aeroplanes scout over the city every day, and at night you can see their lights moving overhead in the darkness. Sometimes they fly so low that you can hear the whir of their engines. For the moment you don't know if they're Russian or enemy ones.

And all night long high-powered automobiles rush up the hill to the General Headquarters, bearing dispatches from the front.

I lie in bed, and it is impossible for me to sleep. It is as if I were up over Kiev in an aeroplane, myself. I can see millions of Germans marching along the roads from Warsaw, dragging their cannon through the mud, fording streams, with their field kitchens and ambulances, moving onward irresistibly toward the golden domes of Kiev.

You seem far away to-night. Only I love you. I can't love you enough.

RUTH.

October.

Darlingest Mother and Dad:—

This afternoon I went up to the English Consulate with Sasha. As we turned the corner we saw a long gray procession of carts crawling down the hill toward us. I stopped and watched them pass me, one after the other, crowded over to the side of the road by the usual traffic of a busy street. Peasants walked by the horses' heads, men in dusty sheepskin coats, or women muffled up somehow, their hands hidden in the bosoms of their waists for warmth. They stared ahead with a curious, blind look in their eyes, as though they did not realize the noise and movement of the city life about them. How strange it was, the passing of this silent peasant procession by the side of the clanging trains and gray war automobiles!

"Who are these people?" I asked Sasha.

"They must be the fugitives," she replied. "Every day they come in increasing numbers. I have heard the Kiev authorities are trying to turn them aside and make them go round the outskirts; for what can a city do with whole provinces of homeless and hungry peasants?"

"You mean they are the refugees who have been driven out of their homes by the enemy?" I asked.

"Yes. By the Germans and Austrians."

The carts jolted slowly down the hill, the brakes grinding against the wheels, the little rough-coated horses holding back in the shafts. Sometimes, where there should have been two horses, there was only one. The others evidently had been sold or else died on the way. Only one small horse to drag a heavy double cart crowded with people and furnishings. One little horse looked about to drop. His sides were heaving painfully and his eyes were glazed. "Why don't they stop and rest," I thought. "Why does that man keep on? His horse will die, and then what will he do?"

"What do they do when their horses give out?" I asked Sasha.

"What can they do?" she replied. "What did they do when they were forced to leave their farms and lands? They bear it. The Russian people have a great capacity for suffering. Think of it—what this means now—hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people made homeless and sent wandering over the face of the earth. Think of the separations—the families broken up—the bewilderment. A month ago, perhaps, they had their houses and lands and food to eat. They were muzhiks. And now they are wandering, homeless, like Tziganes. Ah, the Russian people were born into a heritage of suffering, and to us all the future is hidden."

I kept my eyes on the endless procession. Some of the carts were open farm wagons, piled with hay, and hung with strange assortments of household utensils. Frying-pans and kettles were strung along the sides, enameled ones, sometimes, that showed a former prosperity. Inside were piles of mattresses and chairs; perhaps a black stovepipe stuck out through the slatted sides of the cart. The women and children huddled together in the midst of their household goods, wrapped up in the extra petticoats and waists and shawls they had brought along—anything for warmth. The children were pale and pinched, and some of them had their eyes closed as though they were sick. If they looked at you, it was without any curiosity or eagerness. How pitiful the indifference of the children was!

Sometimes the carts were covered with faded cloth stretched over rounded frameworks like gypsy-wagons. There, the old babas sat on the front seats, eyes like black shoe-buttons, with their lives almost finished. They seemed the least affected by the misery and change. They occupied the most comfortable places, and held the bright-colored ikons in their arms—the most precious possession of a Russian home. Perhaps a dog was tied under the wagon, or a young colt trotted along by its mother's side.

It was as though there had been a great fire, and every one had caught up what he could to save from destruction: homes broken into little bits to be put together again in a strange land.

An open cart broke down in front of us. The woman got out to help her husband. She had a round, pock-marked face, as expressionless as wood. She wore a bright shawl over her hair, and a long sheepskin coat, with the sleeves and pockets beautifully embroidered in colors. It was dirty, now, but indicated she had been well-to-do once. She limped badly.

"Good-evening," I said.

"Good-evening, excellency," she replied civilly.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"My feet are blistered from the walking," she replied. "I take turns with my husband."

"Where are you from?"

"Rovno."

"How long have you been on the way?"

"Many weeks. Who knows how long?"

"And where are you going?"

"Where the others go. Somewhere into the interior."

The procession had not halted, but, turning out for the broken-down cart, continued uninterruptedly down the hill. Every now and then the peasant looked up anxiously.

"We must hurry. We mustn't be left behind," he muttered.

"What do you eat?" I asked the woman.

"What we can find. Sometimes we get food at the relief stations, or we get it along the way."

"Do the villages you pass through help you?" I persisted.

"They do what they can. But there are so many of us."

"Can't you find cabbages and potatoes in the fields?" I asked.

The woman looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and did not reply.

"Why do you want to know these things?" she asked, after a silence. "What business is it of yours?"

"I want to help you."

"Help us." She shook her head. "But I'll tell you," she said. "I did take some potatoes once. It was before the cold weather. I dug them out of a field we passed through after dark. No one saw me. My children were crying with hunger and I had nothing to give them. So I dug up a handful of potatoes in the dark. But God saw me and punished me. I cooked the potatoes over a fire by the roadside, but He kept the heat from reaching the inside of the potatoes. Two of my children sickened and died from eating them. It was God's punishment. We buried them along the road. My husband made the crosses out of wood and carved their names on them. They lie way behind us now—unsung. But perhaps those who pass along the road and see the crosses will offer up a prayer."

"I will burn candles for them," I said. "What were their names?"

"Sonia and Peter Kolpakova, your excellency. You are good. God bless you!" And she kissed my hands.

I looked at the three children who were left. They sat in the cart silently, surrounded by the incongruous collection of pots and pans, and leaning against a painted chest. The chest was covered with dust, but you could still see a bunch of bright-painted flowers behind the children's heads.

"Poor little things," I said. "Are they cold?"

"It's hard on the children," the mother replied stolidly. "They can't stand it as we can. We are used to trouble. We know what life is. But the children—they are sick most of the time. They have no strength left. What can we do for them? We have no medicines. Have you any medicines?" she asked, with a sudden, hopeful glint in her dull, wide-set eyes. "No?" Her face regained its impassivity.

Her husband straightened himself, grunting. He had finished tying the broken wheel together with rope.

"Come, we must be moving. Hurry, or we'll be left behind," he said, going to the little horse's head.

The woman climbed back into the cart and took the youngest child in her arms. A feeble wail came from the dull-colored bundle. Her husband turned the horse into the procession again.

Still the carts were coming over the hill, gray and dusty, with the peasants and their wives walking beside the horses' heads. What a river of suffering! What a smell came from it! And automobiles and tramways rushed by.

Is this the twentieth century?

October.

I delayed mailing my last letter, so I shall tell you about another glimpse I've had of the refugees. Yesterday, as we sat drinking tea, we heard the rumble and creak of heavy wagons outside the pension. The noise reached us distinctly in spite of the windows being hermetically sealed with putty for the winter. At first we thought it was the regular train of carts that climb Institutska Oulitza every evening at six o'clock carrying provisions to the barracks. But the rumble and creak persisted so long that I went to the window at last to see why there were so many more carts than usual.

There was a procession of carts, but instead of going up the hill in the direction of the barracks, it was descending the hill, and instead of soldiers in clumsy uniforms, peasants in bell-shaped sheepskin coats walked by their horses' heads, snapping the long lash whips they carried in their hands. I recognized the covered gypsy wagons and the open carts with their bulky loads. It was too dark to see distinctly, but I knew they were refugees by the strings of kettles along the sides of the carts, which caught the electric light in coppery flashes. And in the open wagons I could see the pale disks of faces. As I watched, the procession came to a stand-still and the drivers collected in little groups under the white globes of the street lamps. I went outdoors and crossed the street to them.

I approached a group of three men.

"Good-evening," I said.

"Good-evening, Panna," they replied.

"Have you come far?"

"Far? I should say we've been two months on the road," replied the best-dressed man of the three. He had fur cuffs and collar on his long sheepskin coat, and his boots were strong and well made.

"Can you tell me where we can get some tobacco?" he asked.

I directed him down the street a little way. He took a piece of silver from a leather purse he wore round his neck, and gave it to one of his companions, who left on the errand. The other man went round to the tail of the cart and took down two bags of grain for the horses' supper.

"Good horses you have there," I said, to say something.

"Yes, indeed; the best horses a man ever had; less good ones would have died on the road long ago. I bought them for fifty roubles apiece, and I wouldn't take two hundred and fifty for them to-day. But, then, they're all I have left of back there." He spoke in a quiet voice, scratching his stubby, unshaven face, absent-mindedly.

"Is he traveling with you?" I asked, pointing to the man who was slinging the grain-bags round the horses' necks.

"Yes. I picked him up along the road. His horse had died under him and he counted himself no longer a human being. What was he, indeed, with nothing he could call his own in the world any more? I let him come along with me. I had extra room. So I let him come along with me." His voice had no expression in it.

"But haven't you a family?" I asked.

"I have three children," he replied.

"It must be hard to take care of children at such a time as this."

"God knows it is," he replied. There was a sudden desperate note in his voice. "It's a woman's business. But my wife died on the way. A month and a half ago—soon after we started. It seems soon, now, but we'd been long enough on the road to kill her with the jolting and misery of it."

"Was she sick?"

"She died in childbirth. There was no one to take care of her, and nothing for her to eat. I made a fire, and she lay on the ground. All night she moaned. She died toward morning. The baby only lived a few hours. It was better it should die. What was ahead of it but suffering? It was a boy, and my wife and I had always wanted a boy. But I wouldn't have minded so much if the little wife had lived. It's hard without her."

The man returned with the tobacco and the three peasants lighted cigarettes. All was quiet. I heard nothing but the champing of the horses as they munched the grain and the whistling of the wind through the poplars in the convent garden.

"Kiev is a big city—a holy city, I've heard. Many from our town have made a pilgrimage here," the rich peasant observed.

For the moment I'd forgotten where I was. Now I heard the city noises; the footsteps grinding on pavements; the whistle and grinding of trains. And the lights from the city reddened the mists that rose from the Dnieper.

The carts in front began to move on.

"Where are we going?"—"What are the orders?"—"Is there a relief station here?" every one cried at once.

"Good-bye. A good journey," I cried.

"Thank you. Good-bye."

The men stepped out into the road again. I watched cart after cart pass me. The women looked straight out between the horses' ears, and showed no curiosity or wonderment at being in a big city for the first time in their lives. Strange sights and faces had no significance for them any more.

I ducked under a horse's nose and went indoors again.

There is something shameful in our security. We have shelter and bread. We can only feel life indirectly, after all. We are always muffled up by things. And America. A pathologic fear clutches me, for how will it all end?

My love to you every minute.

RUTH.

October.

Dearests:—

There seems no beginning or end to my stay here. How strange it is to look back to July and remember the long, hot days and the languorous nights when, in spite of the war, people walked in the gardens and listened to the music and drank punch out of tea-cups, pretending it was tea. The still, starlit nights of July.

I remember a dinner Princess P—— gave at Koupietsky Park a few nights after my arrival in Russia. Everything was so new to me. Our table was set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the fantastic shimmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond, the flat plain, silent and mysterious, with, over the horizon rim, the thunder and clang of war. But war was far away those first days I was in Russia. I hardly thought of it.

The dome and square walls of a monastery were momentarily whitened by a wheeling searchlight, and high up against the dusky, starlit sky was printed a shining gold cross. Women's dresses glimmered in the darkness like gray, widespread wings of moths, and laughter came from the curve of the terrace overlooking the monastery garden.

"My child, there are tears in your eyes; how pretty!" the Princess cried, taking my hand in hers and stroking it with her small, cold fingers.

There were other Americans present beside myself, and I knew the Princess loved one of them. It was to make him jealous, I knew, that she held my hand in hers throughout dinner. She, herself, hardly ate anything, only smoked one cigarette after another. There were all sorts of zakouski, stuffed tomatoes and cucumbers and queer little fishes in oil, and pickled sturgeon and mushrooms, and salads and caviar, and there was kvass to drink,—deep red,—and a champagne cup served in a teapot, and cigarettes all through the meal.

The Princess was middle-aged and wanted to appear youthful; so she dyed her hair blue-black which was harsh for her pointed face, and wore costly, too elaborate clothes from Paris. But her body showed delicately round under the laces and chiffons, and she was quick and light in her gestures like a bird. Her husband, who had been twice her age, had died, leaving her large estates and much money. Now she moved about Russia with a maid and a wee little dog and numberless trunks, frivolously seeking her pleasure. Her eyes were black and glittering, and her mouth red and thin and flexible. She had caressing, spoiled ways with every one from the American whom she called "Meester" to her chow dog, and all she asked from any one was amusement.

"I like Americans," she said with shameless flattery. "So much I like them. The women—and the men. I shall go to New York after the war, and you will show me your famous cabarets, and—what do you call it?" She appealed to "Meester."

"Broadway—good old Broadway," he replied indulgently.

"Ah, yes. B-r-r-oadway. And I will dance all night. I dance magnificently. Is it not so, Meester? Yes, I will go to New York and become just like an American."

After dinner we went to a wrestling-match, and "Meester" took the Princess, radiant and vivacious and paying all the bills, back to the Continental.

Since July war has come nearer Kiev. The hospitals are full of maimed and wounded soldiers who fought to defend Russia. They made a bulwark of their breasts. It was as though one single giant breast, hundreds of versts broad, thrust itself between the Germans and home.

And it is winter now. The days are short with an icy, gray mist from the Dnieper, and flurries of snow. There is a shortage of coal, and we sit shivering in our apartment. We drag the covers off the beds and wrap ourselves up in them while we read books from the circulating library or play three-handed bridge. The wind rattles the windows and streaks the panes with snow and rain. But however dirty they get, they must remain unwashed till spring; for they are sealed for the winter with putty, and you can open only one small pane at the top. The apartment is darker than ever. Not once does the sun shine into our rooms. We see the sunlight in the street, but the dark shadow of the building lengthens minute by minute, stretching itself across the street and reaching up over the convent wall like the smothering black hand of a giant, till only the tips of the cypresses and poplars in the gardens are red in the late sunlight.

At tea-time we go to "Francois's" or to some other little sweet-shop, in order to get warm. There, we drink glass after glass of weak tea and eat little Polish cakes, and look over the English and French periodicals.

It is dark when we go out into the street again, and the air is frosty. The officers wear short gray coats, braided and lined with fur, and fur caps. The women are muffled in seal and sable, which make the skin look clear and white and their eyes brilliant. Even the peasants wear sheepskin coats, bell-shaped and richly embroidered. Marie has winter clothes, but the warmest thing I possess is my traveling suit I wore here in June, which has been getting thinner and thinner ever since. My feet, in low summer pumps, are swollen and burning with chilblains. I must get some high shoes when our next money comes. You see, that is the trouble. We are promised our passports from day to day, and, expecting to go at any time, we try to get along with what money we have, and wait to buy clothes till we get back to Bucharest. But our passports are not given us and our money gets low. We are waiting for money now, and, of course, a cold snap has set in just when we can't possibly buy anything. Peter's summer suit hangs on him in folds. The heaviest iron couldn't crease it into even temporary shape. When we went to the cinematograph last night he wore Marie's black fur coat to keep from freezing.

"Look at that man," we heard a woman say in the street. "He's wearing a woman's coat!"

Yes, we go from cafe to cinematograph and try and keep warm.

I've never liked moving pictures before. Here they are presented differently than in America. Some of the plays I've seen have the naivete and simplicity of a confession. Others interpret abnormal, psychopathic characters whose feelings and thoughts are expressed by the actors with a fine and vivid realism. There is the exultation of life, and the despair, the aggression and apathy, the frivolity and the revolt. The action is taken slowly. There are no stars. You look at the screen as though you were looking at life itself. And the films don't always have happy endings, because life isn't always kind. It often seems senseless and cruel and crushes men's spirits. I wish we could have these films in America instead of the jig-saw puzzles I've seen.

October.

There is a gypsy who sells fruit at the corner of Institutska Oulitza, a woman so enormous that she resembles a towering mountain, and her customers look, beside her, like tiny Russian toys. Every one looks at her curiously, and I have seen several gentlemen in fur pelisses, with gold-headed canes, stop and speak to her. In the morning she wheels up her cart by the curbing and polishes the pears and apples with the end of her shawl till they shine. Then she piles them up in red and yellow pyramids and waits for customers, her hands on her hips. Everything about her is crude and flaming and inextinguishable like life itself. Her scarlet skirt lights up the whole street. It floats about her, and when she bends over to serve a customer, you can see the edges of green and yellow and pink and brown petticoats underneath as her overskirt tilts up. The lines of her body are brutal and compact. Her dark, mulberry-colored shawl is stretched tightly across her full bosom. Her eyebrows meet over her nose in a heavy, broad line like a smudge of charcoal, and her nose is spongy, and her lips swollen and red from taking snuff. She holds her black and silver snuff-box in her hand or hides it away in a pocket in her voluminous skirt when she serves some one. Her fingers are covered with rings and she wears yellow hoops in her ears. I am repulsed as well as attracted. She is like a bold, upright stroke of life, and then I see her crafty eyes and notice how, in spite of her size, when she moves it is with the softness and flexibility of a huge cat.

Peter went to Petrograd to-day and he will stay there till he gets our passports. He would have gone a month ago, but first came the panic from the German advance, and then the railways were used only for military purposes. Now, Marie and I are alone, waiting for a telegram from him.



V

October.

To-day, the chief of the secret service came and told us all political prisoners were to be sent on to Siberia. He told us to make a small bundle of necessary things and be ready to leave at any time. With Peter in Petrograd! I asked him where we were going and he shrugged his shoulders. I went to Mr. Douglas, who has wired Peter. Also, he is going to see the chief and try and keep in touch with us. We won't leave till the last moment. But already many of the hospitals have been moved, and certain prisoners. I suppose I must destroy these letters to you. But I will wait till the last moment. I want so much for you to get them and know what has happened, because I shan't see you, to tell you with my voice, for over a year still. I have written so fully for that reason.

A few days later.

We are still here, and there is more hope in the situation. There is a persistent report in the papers, and it is repeated in the streets and houses, that the Germans have been stopped by Riga and Dvinsk. Large bodies of troops are moved through Kiev, day and night, for the front. Regular train service is suspended by this movement of troops.

Huge vans pass through the city, carrying aeroplanes to the aviation field outside the barracks. Once we saw a wrecked one being sent to be repaired. A troop of small boys followed it, looking curiously at the broad, broken wings and the tangle of steel framework.

Guns are arriving, too. We see them being carted through the streets. And early this morning we heard cannon. Our first thought was of the Germans, and we lay in bed, stiff with fright. Later, we heard they were the new cannon being tried out before being sent to the front. They say that fresh ammunition has been received from Japan and America. All trains are held up to let these trainloads of guns and cannon and ammunition go tearing over the rails to the front to save Russia. And just in time. I see the open cars packed and covered and guarded by soldiers. I lie in bed and hear the whistle and shriek of the trains in the night, and I imagine row upon row of long iron-throated cannon staring up at the stars.

The Czar has arrived in Kiev for a conference at Headquarters. He came during the night, and no one knows when he will leave. There was no demonstration, and the police break up any groups of more than three persons in the streets.

A dozen or so Japanese officers passed through Kiev, too. They were bound for the front, escorting their guns and ammunition. How curious they looked beside the big, naive Russians. They were like porcelain figurines with impenetrable, yellow faces, mask-like, and tiny hands and feet. What a finished product they appear, and yet they go to the front and observe the latest methods of warfare and multiply their merchant marine while the rest of the world is spending itself.

October.

I went to a military hospital to-day. It was up on a hill, a huge place, formerly a school, I think, with a broad piazza where the convalescents walked in their gray bathrobes. Inside were rows and rows of cots, and on every cot a wounded man. It appeared that a fresh batch had arrived from the front, and the doctors were just finishing with them. There was a foul smell of blood and sweat and anaesthetics, and the light came dismally through the dirty window-panes, showing dimly the rows and rows of pale, weary faces on the thin pillows. Sometimes the gray blankets came up to the chin, and the man looked dead already, he was so dreadfully still, with his closed eyes and waxlike face. Another moaned continuously, moving his head from side to side—"Oh, oh—Oh, oh." His eyes were open, and hard and bright with fever. Several had their heads wound with strips of bandages. You would hardly have known they were human. Two or three were blind, with the bandage only round their eyes, and it was strange to see the expression their hands took on—workmen's hands with stubby fingers, now white and helpless-looking, and picking at the cover aimlessly.

A nurse told me how an officer who had been blinded and was about to be discharged and sent home, had committed suicide the other day. In some way one of his men, who had been wounded in the arm, had been able to smuggle in a revolver to him. The officer killed himself in the middle of the night.

"I don't suppose he knew whether it was day or night, and took a chance that no one was looking," I said.

"I think he knew it was night," she replied. "He could tell by the others' breathing. I was night nurse. He was dead before I reached him. The soldier gave himself up of his own accord. He will be court-martialed, of course, though every one knows he did the best thing. He said to us, 'He was my captain. He ordered me to get the revolver, and I only obeyed orders. I would do it again.' We had a hard time the rest of the night to quiet the men."

In a small room to one side were six men gone mad. They were quite harmless and lay quietly in bed. Besides having their reason smashed to bits by the horrors at the front, they were badly wounded. I was ashamed to stand there looking at them. What was I? Suddenly, one of them, a young boy surely not more than twenty-one or twenty-two, caught sight of us, and he fixed his eyes upon us in a curious, concentrated way as if to assure himself we were real. And then, all at once, abject terror leapt into his eyes. His mouth opened and the cords of his neck stood out. He threw both arms before his face as if to ward off somebody or something. He began to scream out quick, unintelligible words in a high-pitched, staccato voice. I looked fearfully at the others to see if his terror would be communicated to them. But they were apparently oblivious of each other, wrapped up in their separate lives and experiences. One middle-aged man, with a rough, reddish beard, was smiling mildly and smoothing the sheet as though it had been somebody's hair. We left the room, leaving the nurse to calm the screaming man. I thought of the terrors and fears and memories in that room: the snatches of memories pieced together that made up the actual lives, now, of those broken men in there.

"Are they—do they suffer?" I asked the doctor.

"No. They don't seem to realize that they are wounded and suffer the way normal people would with their wounds. The only thing is, they all have moments of terror, when it's all we can do to quiet them. They think the wall of the room is the enemy moving down on them. I guess they went through hell all right, there at the front!"

"Will they get better?"

"We can't tell. We have a specialist studying just such cases. These men seem pretty well smashed, to me."

In one corner lay a young man propped up with pillows. A nurse was holding his hand. His eyes were looking at her so trustfully. He hardly seemed to be breathing and his face was bloodless—even his lips were dead white. And as I looked, he gave a little sigh, and his eyes closed and his body sagged among the pillows. The nurse bent over him and then straightened herself. Quickly she arranged a screen round the bed. When she walked away, I could see she was crying uncontrollably.

"Is he—?"

"Yes. He's dead," the doctor replied. "He's been dying for a week. He was terribly wounded in the stomach, and there was nothing we could do for him. It was a repulsive case to care for, but Sister Mary had full charge of it. She sat with him for hours at a time. In the beginning, to encourage him, she bought a pair of boots he was to wear when he got well. For days, now, he's been out of his head and fancied she was his mother."

And life presses as close to death as that—while I was looking at him, he had died. I just managed to reach the door before I fainted.

October.

The Governor of Kiev has been removed. He was too cautious. It was a bad example!



VI

October.

Darling ones:—

There is the most careful avoidance of any official responsibility here in trying to find out where our passports are, and who is to return them. We have already unraveled yards of red tape, and still there is no end. Of course, ever since Peter came he has followed a schedule of visits—one day to the English Consul; another day to the secret police, then to the Military Governor, the Civil Governor, the Chief of Staff, and back, in desperation, to the English Consul. There is an American Vice-Consul here, but he is wholly ineffectual, since he has not yet been officially received. His principal duty consists in distributing relief to the Polish refugees. Mr. Douglas, the English Consul, is our one hope, and he is untiring in his efforts to help us. If we ever get out, it will be due to him. The English Government is behind its representatives here in a way that the American State Department is not. Partly, I suppose, this is because America has no treaty with Russia, on account of the Jew clause. At any rate, you might just as well be a Fiji Islander as an American, for all the consideration you get from officialdom.

Did I write you about the naturalized American Jew in the detention camp? He had come back to Galicia in the summer of 1914 to see his sister married. After the outbreak of the war, he was refused permission to leave the country, and when the wholesale clean-up started, he was deported with the others. The day I visited the detention camp he had just arrived, and, knowing we were Americans, he tried to secure our aid. He had managed to keep his American passport, and brought it out to us to prove his naturalization and to strengthen his demand to be set free as an American citizen. The overseer, hearing his excited voice and seeing us examine a large sheet of paper, came up. He looked like a butcher, in his dirty-white linen coat, his legs planted apart, his hands fingering his short whip. The way in which he joined our group and made himself one with us, without so much as by your leave, was disturbing. The cool self-assurance of even a petty Russian official is sinister. They are straw men to your reason, but hard facts if you bump up against them. Our curiosity flagged, conscious as we were all the time of his unblinking ferret-eyes on us, and we showed a certain alacrity to return the passport to its rightful owner. When we were handing it back to the Jew, the overseer thrust out his hand and said, "Let me see it."

There was nothing for the Jew to do but hand it over. The overseer could not read a word of English, of course, but from the big red American seal he could recognize it as an official document.

Suddenly, he tore it in halves, and as the Jew tried to grab it out of his hands, he cuffed the Jew down, and continued deliberately to tear it into tiny bits.

"I am an American and that is my passport," the Jew cried.

"That's what I think of an American passport," the overseer replied, looking us over with incredible impudence as he walked away.

The rest of Russian officialdom must regard American rights in much the same way, since it is four months now that we have been detained.

I went to the headquarters of the secret police the other day with Mr. Douglas. It is located in the opposite end of the town, down a quiet side street—an unobtrusive, one-storied brown house that gives the impression of trying to hide itself from people's notice. It is reached by a narrow, stone-flagged path, crowded in between two houses which block its view from the street. There are four windows in a row on the front facade, all with the curtains drawn. These four blind windows add to the secretive appearance. Over the front steps the yellowing leaves of a lime tree rustled in the wind and detached themselves one by one.

We rang the bell. While we waited, I was conscious of being watched, and, glancing up quickly, I saw the curtain at one of the windows fall back into place. The door opened a crack, and a white face with a long, thin nose, and horn-rimmed spectacles with smoky glass to hide the eyes, peered out at us furtively. Mr. Douglas handed the spy his card and the door was shut softly in our faces.

In about three minutes the door was opened again, and a gendarme in uniform ushered us into a long room thick with stale tobacco-smoke. He gave me a chair, and while we waited I looked about at the walls with the brightly colored portraits of the Czar and the Czarina and the royal family, and the ikon in one corner. "Give up all hope all ye who enter here."

The room was silent except for the scratch of pens on paper. The secret-service spies sat at long tables, writing laboriously, and smoking. They all wore civilian clothes, and I recognized most of them. I had passed them on the street or sat beside them in restaurants, and three had come with the chief to arrest us. I wondered what they were writing. Some one was being betrayed or ruined. That was how they lived. I looked for the mark of their calling on them, but at first they appeared an ordinary crowd, pale, with a thick, unhealthy pallor, as though from an indoor life. Their suits were poor enough,—worn threadbare,—and their fingernails were dirty. Furtively they glanced up at me and examined me curiously, and then gave quick, frightened looks on either side to see if their comrades had observed their interest in me. What a mediocre, shabby crowd, with their low foreheads and dead-white skin and dirty linen, and, yes, the stamp on them that made them infamous! It was as though their profession affected them the way that living in a close, dark room would, stupefying and making them bestial.

And then the chief came in, accompanied by two spies with black portfolios under their arms. When he saw us, he grew white with anger. He looked like a German, spurred and booted, with square head and jaw and steel-like eyes and compressed, cruel lips. He was the only well-dressed one in the crowd, but his livery was the same as theirs. He was their superior, that was all, and how I loathed him!

"He's angry because we were brought in here," Douglas whispered under his breath.

The chief turned his back on us.

The spies scribbled away furiously, their noses close to their paper, not daring to look up.

We were taken into another room, a small back room, bare except for a table and sofa and a tawdry ikon in the farthest corner. And there we waited fully fifteen minutes in absolute silence. How silent that house was, full of invisible horrors! The headquarters of the secret police—why shouldn't it be terrifying when you think of the men and women who have been brought here in secret, and their existence suddenly snapped off: secret arrest, secret trial, or no trial at all, and then a secret sending-off up north, out of the reach of the world! What strange abortions of life this Government brings forth! Is it curious that thinking men and women, who have lived apparently well-regulated lives, suddenly throw bombs at a minister in a railway station, or at an official as he drives to the palace in dress uniform, with jeweled decorations on his breast? I ran my hand over the faded sofa-covering, wondering who had sat there before me.

Suddenly the chief came into the room, closing the door carefully behind him. He was quite calm again.

"What do you want?" He looked at Douglas.

Douglas explained how anxious we were to get out of Russia, how we had insufficient money for cold weather, how my husband's business called for his immediate presence, and so forth, all of which we had gone over at least three times a week since my arrest, and all of which was a matter of complete indifference to the secret police. They had failed to find any proof of espionage, which was their charge against us, and my letter, their only evidence, had been passed on and was snarled up somewhere in official red-tape. Now they washed their hands of me.

"We can do nothing. It is out of our hands." He was extremely courteous, speaking German for my benefit. "It is unfortunate that Frau Pierce should have written the letter. I was obliged to send it on to the General Staff. You should have a reply soon."

There was nothing more to be said. Douglas was conciliatory, almost ingratiating. My nerves gave way.

"A reply soon!" I burst out. "I'm sick of waiting. If we have the liberty of the city, surely there can't be anything very serious against us. It's an outrage keeping our passports. I'm an American and I demand them." I was almost crying.

"You must demand them through your Ambassador, meine Frau."

I knew that he knew we had been telegraphing him since our arrest and my impotence made me speechless with rage. Douglas took advantage of my condition to beat a hasty retreat.

As we were going through the doorway, the chief said carelessly, "By the way, how did you happen to find this house?"

"I have been here before," Douglas replied.

"Thank you. I was only curious."

I could feel the spies' eyes on my back as we went down the path.

"Mrs. Pierce—Mrs. Pierce, you must not lose your temper that way."

"I don't care!" I cried. "I had no way to express what I felt."

"I know," Douglas agreed thoughtfully.

We hailed a droshky and got in.

"I have a friend—a Pole," said Douglas. "For no reason except that he was a Pole, they made a revision at his house, and among other things took away every calling card they found. They made a revision then on each one of those people whose names they found. Though they found nothing incriminating in his possession, they make him report every day at the police headquarters. A year ago he was a giant in strength. Now he is a sick man. The uselessness of it. Nothing was found against him, and yet he is followed and watched. What are they driving at? They are wearing him to the bone with their persecution." He shrugged his shoulders and laughed suddenly. "Come, Mrs. Pierce, you can do nothing against them. But let me tell you what I will give you. It is a German helmet that a friend of mine brought from the Riga front. You can put it in your room and blow beans at it!"

October.

"Passports—passports, who's got the passports?" It's like a game—or la recherche de l'absolu. And it isn't as though you could hop into a cab and make the round of visits on the General Staff, Civil Governor, and the rest, all in one day, or even all in a week. Nothing so efficient and simple as that. What is an official without an anteroom? As well imagine a soldier without a uniform. And the importance of the official is instantly seen by the crowd waiting on him. Soldiers and Jews and patient, unobtrusive women in black wait at police headquarters; generals and ladies of quality crowd the anteroom of the General Staff. For days the faces vary only slightly when you enter and take your accustomed place. Patient, dull faces that light with momentary expectation on the opening of a door, and relapse into depression and tragic immobility when the aide walks through the anteroom without admitting any one to the inner office.

I gained admittance to the Military Governor the other day. He is the successor of that over-cautious governor who moved all his household goods during the German advance, and was then relieved of office. His palace, set back from the street behind a tall iron fence, is guarded by soldiers with bayonets, and secret-service men. I laughed, recognizing my old friends the spies.

Upstairs, the Governor was just saying good-bye to Bobrinsky, former Governor of Galicia, and we stood to one side as they came out of an inner office, bowing and making compliments to each other. Gold braid and decorations! These days the military have their innings, to be sure! I wonder how many stupid years of barrack-life go to make up one of these men? Or perhaps so much gold braid is paid for in other ways.

The Governor was an old man, carefully preserved. His uniform was padded, but his legs, thin and insecure, gave him away, and his standing collar, though it came up to his ears, failed to hide his scrawny neck where the flesh was caving in. He wore his gray beard trimmed to a point, and inside his beaklike nose was a quantity of grayish-yellow hair which made a very disagreeable impression on me. All the time I was speaking he examined his nails. When he raised his eyes finally, to reply, I noticed how lifeless and indifferent they were, and glazed by age. I could see the bones of his face move under the skin as he talked, especially two little round bones, like balls, close to his ears.

"I have nothing to do with the case. It has been referred to the General Staff, I believe. You will have to wait for the course of events."

He turned his back, went over to the window, and began to play with a curtain-tassel. An aide bowed me to the door.

Outside, the anteroom was crowded with supplicants. It was his reception hour. The murmur of whispered conversations stopped when we appeared. Every one rose, pressing forward to reach the aide. Some held out soiled bits of paper; others talked in loud, explanatory voices, as though hoping by sheer noise to pierce the crust of official attention. But the aide took no more notice than if they had been crowding sheep. He pushed through them and escorted me to the head of the staircase. Down I went, boiling with rage.

Dearest Mother and Dad:—

I am just back from the General Staff, where the mysterious rotation of the official wheel landed me unexpectedly into the very sanctum sanctorum of the Chief of the Staff, and to see him I had to wait only five hours with Mr. Douglas in the anteroom! Mr. Douglas has just left me to go to his club, exhausted, ready to devour pounds of Moscow sausages, so he said.

The anteroom of the General Staff was as Russian as Russian can be. I suppose I shall never forget the dingy room, with its brown painted walls and the benches and chairs ranged along the four sides of the room, and the orderlies bringing in glasses of tea, and the waiting people who were not ashamed to be unhappy. In the beginning Mr. Douglas and I tried to talk, but after an hour or so we relapsed into silence. I looked up at the large oil paintings of deceased generals which hung about the room. At first, they all looked fat and stupid and alike in the huge, ornate gilt frames. But after much study they began to take on differences—slight differences which it seemed that the painters had caught in spite of themselves, but which made human beings of even generals.

There was one portrait that I remember, in the corner, a general in the uniform of the Crimean War. He looked out at you with green eyes, like a cat's. The more I looked at him, the more he resembled a cat, with his flat, broad head and slightly almond eyes and long mustache. His cheek bones were high and his jaw square and cruel. He settled into his coat-collar the way a cat shortens its neck when it purrs. He, too, was purring, from gratification, perhaps, at having his portrait painted; but, wholly untrustworthy himself, he distrusted the world and held himself ready to strike.

Another portrait was of a man who might have been of peasant origin. An inky black beard hid the lower part of his face, but his nose was blunt and pugnacious, and his eyes were like black shoe-buttons sewn close together. He stuck out his stomach importantly, and the care with which his uniform and decorations were painted strengthened the impression that he had made his career himself and set the highest value on the insignia that stood for his accomplishment.

Well, I made up characters to fit the portraits, and the time went on. There were three entrances to the room, through which aides and orderlies were constantly appearing and disappearing. The room filled up with people and smelt of oiled leather and smoke. The women did not move from their chairs, but the men got up and stood about, talking in groups. I began to feel that I had known these captains and majors and lieutenants all my life. They looked at me curiously, and if they knew Mr. Douglas they asked to be presented to me.

"How do you like Russia?"

They spoke French. I looked at Mr. Douglas and smiled.

"Very much."

They were pleased.

"Ah, you do? That is good. Russia is a wonderful country and its resources are endless. But it is war-time. You should see Russia in peace-time. There is no country in the world where one amuses one's self so well as in Russia. But first we must beat the Germans."

They all begin that way, and then branch out into their particular line of conversation.

There was a woman near me, her mourning veil thrown back, disclosing a death-like face. Her features were pinched, and her pale lips were pressed tightly together in suffering. She had been waiting surely three hours since sending in her card, and all that time she had scarcely moved. Sometimes I forgot her, and then my eyes would fall on her and I wondered how I could see anybody else in the room. In comparison to her all the others seemed fussy or melodramatic or false in some way. Suffering was condensed in her. It flowed through her body. It settled in the shadows of her face and clothed her in black. Her gloved hands pressed each other. Her eyes stared in front of her, full of pain like a hurt beast's. She sat as though carved in stone, dark against the window, the lines of her body rigid and clear-cut like a statue's.

At last an aide came toward her, spruce and alert, holding a paper in his hand. She rose at his approach, leaning on the back of her chair, her body bent forward tensely. He spoke to her in a low voice, consulting the slip of paper in his hand. All at once she straightened herself, and a burning expression came into her face. One hand went to her heart, exactly as though a bullet had pierced her breast. Then she gave a sharp cry, and hurling her pocketbook across the room with all her strength, she rushed outside.

Every one dodged as though the pocketbook had been aimed at him. A young second lieutenant picked it from the floor and stood twisting it in his hands, not knowing what to do with it. People looked uneasy and ashamed as though a door had been suddenly opened on a terrible secret thing that was customarily locked up in a closet. But the uncomfortable feeling soon passed, and they began to talk about the strange woman and to gossip and play and amuse themselves with her sorrow. A crowd collected about the aide, who grew more and more voluble and important each time he repeated his explanation of the incident.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Douglas and I were admitted to the Chief of Staff. The walls of his office were covered with large maps, with tiny flags marking the battlefronts, and he sat at a large table occupying the center of the room.

When we entered, he rose and bowed, and after waving me to a chair, reseated himself. He was rather like a university professor, courteous, with a slightly ironical twist to his very red lips. His pale face was narrow and long, with a pointed black beard, and a forehead broad and high and white. While he listened or talked, he nervously drew arabesques on a pad of paper on the table.

"I have your petition, but since I have just been appointed here, I am not very familiar with routine matters." Here he smiled slightly. "Yours is a routine matter, I should say. How long have you waited for an answer—four months? We'll see what can be done. I have sent to the files and I should have a report in a few minutes."

An aide brought in a collection of telegrams and papers, and the chief glanced through them. Then he looked at me searchingly and suddenly smiled again.

"From your appearance I should never imagine you were as dangerous as these papers state. Are you an American?"

"Yes," I replied; "and I assure you that I am dangerous only in the official mind. I have no importance except what they give me."

"Mrs. Pierce is an American and unused to Russian ways," Mr. Douglas said apologetically.

"Well, your case has been referred to General Ivanoff, and I will wire him again at once. If you come back next Thursday I will give you a definite answer."

We went out. It was a gray winter day, with a cold wind from the river, but I felt glowing and stimulated and alive, seeing the future crystallize and grow definite again. You can't imagine the wearing depression of months of uncertainty.

"That Chief of Staff is the first human official I've met," I said to Mr. Douglas.

"Give him time, give him time," Douglas replied. "Didn't you hear him say he was new to the job?"

I write such long letters and all about things. But I want you to see with me so we may share our lives in spite of distance. Armfuls of love to you, my dearest ones, from

RUTH.

November.

The Dowager Empress came to Kiev to-day to visit a convent that she has under her protection. The Christiatick was very animated, with curious crowds lining the sidewalks and fierce-looking gendarmes who snapped their whips and made a great fuss about keeping the people in order. The trams were stopped and officials rushed up and down the Christiatick in huge gray automobiles. It was bitterly cold, and the waiting people grew restless. At last a feeble cheer started up the street and swept down the lines as a big car came tearing down the middle of the street. I caught a glimpse of an elderly woman in black—that was all.

I went home. All the way up the hill I walked beside a "crocodile." How pathetic those convent children are in their funny little round hats, all so much too small, and their maroon-colored dresses with the shoulder-capes to hide any suggestion of sex. Their noses were pinched and their lips were blue from waiting in the cold to see their "protector." They were at the age "between hay and grass," narrow-chested, and long-legged like colts. They climbed the hill stiffly two by two, their eyes looking meekly at the ground. Three sisters kept them in line.

At home I found a summons from the police to appear with Marie at the local police bureau to-morrow at nine, to receive our passports. I telegraphed Peter through Mr. Douglas. Now that our affair is settled, I feel no emotion—neither relief nor joy.

THE END



The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS U. S. A.



TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter's errors and to make the use of hyphenated words consistent; otherwise, the transcriber has made a diligent effort to be true to the original text.

2. For ease of navigation, the transcriber has added a Table of Contents that did not appear in the original book.