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'Land for everybody! he cried. 'Have some tea, Tovaristch! and I shared his tea with him. "Then through the dust and noise I suddenly saw Boris Grogoff! That was an astonishing thing. You see I had dissociated all this from my private life. I had even, during these last hours, forgotten Vera, perhaps for the very first moment since I met her.
She loved parties of course, and especially parties in which she was the hostess. She was like a young kitten or puppy in a white frock, with her hair tumbling over her eyes. She was greatly excited, and as joyous as though there were no war, and no afflicted Russia, and nothing serious in all the world. This was the first occasion on which I suspected that Grogoff cared for her.
Grogoff was an internationalist Socialist and expressed his opinions at the top of his voice whenever he could find an occasion. He would sit for hours staring moodily at the floor, or glaring fiercely upon the company. Then suddenly he would burst out, walking about, flinging up his arms, shouting. I saw at once that Markovitch did not like him and that he despised Markovitch.
But if I had cried they would not have heard me. My next instinct was to turn to Markovitch. He was frowning, coughing a little, and feeling the top of his collar. His face was turned towards Grogoff and he was speaking could catch some words: "No right... in my own house... Boris... I apologise... please don't think of it."
"There's Boris!" I was afraid that she would do something violent. "Wait!" I whispered, "perhaps Nina is here somewhere." Grogoff was standing with another man on a small improvised platform just outside the gates of the Bourse. I caught some of Grogoff's sentences: "Tovaristchi!" I heard him cry, "Comrades! Listen to me. Don't allow your feelings to carry you away!
He urged her at once that she must come away with him, there and then, just as she was. She simply shook her head at that. "No... No... No..." she kept repeating. "You don't understand." "I do understand," he answered, always whispering, and with one ear on the door lest the old woman should hear and come in. "We've got very little time," he said. "Grogoff will never let you go if he's here.
"I mention no names," said Markovitch, his little eyes dancing with anger. "Take it or no as you please. But I say that we have had enough of all this vapouring talk, all this pretence of courage. Let us admit that freedom has failed in Russia, that she must now submit herself to the yoke." "Coward! Coward!" screamed Grogoff. "It's you who are the coward!" cried Markovitch.
He heard Lenin say to the servant that, after all, he would not take off his coat, as he was leaving again immediately. Then directly afterwards Grogoff came into the hall. That was the moment of crisis.
It was simply youth and happiness that radiated from her, and also perhaps some other excitement for which I could not account. Grogoff tried to make her drink. She defied him. He came over to her chair, but she pushed him away, and then lightly slapped his cheek. Every one laughed. Then he whispered something to her. For an instant the gaiety left her eyes.
Boris Grogoff was, I think, a little drunk when he arrived; at any rate he was noisy from the very beginning. I have wondered often since whether he had any private knowledge that night which elated and excited him, and was responsible in part, perhaps, for what presently occurred. It may well have been so, although at the time, of course, nothing of the kind occurred to me.
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