The whole history of their lives together, flowing through
how many years, through how many phases, how many quarrels, and
happiness and adventures had reached here a climax whose issue was so
important that life between them could never be the same again.
So urgent had been the affair that during that hour they had forgotten
the Revolution, Russia, the war. Moreover, always in the past, they had
assumed that public life was no affair of theirs. The Russo-Japanese
War, even the spasmodic revolt in 1905, had not touched them except as a
wind of ideas which blew so swiftly through their private lives that
they were scarcely affected by it.
Now in the person of that trembling, shaking figure at their table, the
Revolution had come to them, and not only the Revolution, but the
strange new secret city that Petrograd was... the whole ground was
quaking beneath them.
And in the eyes of the fugitive they saw what terror of death really
was. It was no tale read in a story-book, no recounting of an adventure
by some romantic traveller, it was _here_ with them in the flat and at
any moment....
It was then that Vera realised that there was no time to lose--something
must be done at once.
Pages:
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390