The Neva lay before us like
a blue scarf, and the air faded into colourless beauty above the dark
purple of the towers and domes. Vera caught my arm: "Look!" she
whispered. "There's Boris!" I knew that she had on several occasions
tried to force her way into his flat, that she had written every day to
Nina (letters as it afterwards appeared, that Boris kept from her). 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.
As the soldiers came out (many of them were leaving now on the full tide
of their recent emotions) Grogoff and his friend caught them, held them,
and proceeded to instruct their minds.
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!
You have serious responsibilities now, and the thing for you to do is
not to permit sentiment to make you foolish. Who brought you into this
war? Your leaders? No, your old masters. They bled you and robbed you
and slaughtered you to fill their own pockets.
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