But with Bohun it was simply a case of
re-delivering, piece by piece, the mile that he had had no possible
right to imagine in his possession, and at the end of his relinquishment
he was as naked and impoverished a soul as any life with youth and
health on its side can manage to sustain. He was very miserable during
these first weeks, and then it must be remembered that Petrograd was, at
this time, no very happy place for anybody. Bohun was not a coward--he
would have stood the worst things in France without flinching--but he
was neither old enough nor young enough to face without a tremor the
queer world of nerves and unfulfilled expectation in which he found
himself. In the first place, Petrograd was so very different from
anything that he had expected. Its size and space, its power of reducing
the human figure to a sudden speck of insignificance, its strange lights
and shadows, its waste spaces and cold, empty, moonlit squares, its
jumble of modern and mediaeval civilisation, above all, its supreme
indifference to all and sundry--these things cowed and humiliated him.
He was sharp enough to realise that here he was nobody at all.
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