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Vera Sokolova came over to Prinkipo to see the Markov family. She was the girl who danced in a leopard skin at the Petits Champs. In the old days she had gone to the same school in St. Petersburg as Olga and Tania, and had driven in the same sledge with them to many children’s parties in big houses off the Nevsky Prospekt. She had spent summer holidays with them at the Villa Mimosa in the Crimea when her father and mother were in attendance on the Emperor and Empress at their summer palace. Her father had been executed among the first batch of nobles after the Kerensky régime. Her mother had died of typhus on the flight of Denikin’s army. Now Vera was under the protection of the Countess Volkova, who arranged the ballet at the Petits Champs in Pera.

Olga and Tania fell on her weeping and laughing when she appeared at the villa in Prinkipo.

“Vera!” cried Olga, “how beautiful you have grown. How enchanting to see you again.”

Tania held on to one of her hands and kissed it passionately. “Oh, Vera, do you remember how we used to fight with each other? Do you remember how we used to tell each other stories in bed? Do you remember how we had pillow fights and games of hide-and-seek, and played duets on the nursery piano in St. Petersburg?”

“I remember everything!” answered Vera, putting her arms round both the girls, while tears rushed into her dark eyes. “I remember all that happiness and all that naughtiness. If only those days would come back again!”

Michael was standing by. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his braces hanging down, having been cleaning his top-boots.

“Michael,” said Vera. “You say nothing to me. You haven’t kissed me yet. How tall you are! How noble you look! You were a boy when I saw you last. Now you are a grown-up man and I am shy of you.”

“Kiss her, Michael!” cried Tania. “She asks for it. And we were like brothers and sisters.”

Michael’s face coloured. He felt very shy of this girl who said she was shy of him. He hated to kiss her in front of his sisters. But he stooped down and kissed her hand.

“We’re no longer children,” he said gravely. “I feel a thousand years old.”

“I hope you don’t think I look a thousand years old!” cried Vera merrily.

“You look very nice,” said Michael.

“There,” said Olga. “That’s a great compliment from Michael. The other day when I told him I thought I was beautiful, he had the cheek to tell me I was mistaken and deceived myself.”

“You have become a beauty, Olga!” said Vera, holding her at arm’s length. “Michael will have to look after you. It’s very dangerous to be beautiful in this wicked world. There are many beasts about, my dear. I meet them every night at the Petits Champs. They sit there drinking wine and gazing at us girls, licking their lips and picking out those who are the prettiest and trying to get us to come down and drink with them.”

“Oh, my dear!” cried the mother of Michael. “You make me very frightened. That is all so dangerous for young girls. Your poor mother would be terribly shocked to think of your dancing in such a place.”

“One earns one’s living,” said Vera calmly. “I am very well looked after by the Countess Volkova and some of the others. In any case, there’s nothing I don’t know, and to know is to be warned.”

Michael spoke bitterly.

“I hate to think of you dancing naked before those foul men. It’s frightful.”

Vera laughed at him. “Not quite naked, Michael. I wear an excellent leopard’s skin. In any case, what does it matter? I’m not ashamed of my body. Have you become a Puritan? My body is beautiful, they tell me.”

“You are wonderfully graceful, Vera,” said Tania, staring at Vera with envy. “Every time you move it gives one pleasure. God made you delicately. Your hands are so nicely shaped. I am longing to see you dance.”

“I dance badly,” said Vera. “I just rush around like a Greek maenad. I don’t know the art of the ballet yet. It needs a long education. But I have a sense of it. It is in my body and spirit, I think. Countess Volkova tells me that I might be a great dancer one day if I get proper training. That is my hope. I want to be a Pavlova. I am very ambitious.”

“Tell us about your life,” pleaded Olga. “Is there any chance for me at the Petits Champs? How much do you earn? Do you meet rich young men, or rich old men, who might support one in luxury and restore the fortunes of one’s family?”

“Olga, you’re shameless!” said Michael severely.

“You alarm me, my dear,” said his mother. “I wish you wouldn’t say such things even in fun.”

“I say them seriously, mother,” said Olga with laughing eyes. “We must be practical. We must look forward to the future and I don’t look forward to everlasting poverty.”

“I think I shall write a novel,” said Tania. “I believe I could one day write a great novel like Anna Karenina. That is my ambition. Or perhaps if I don’t look so high at first I might write crime stories for some paper. Of course I shall have to write in French now that Russian is no good to anybody.”

“Tania!” cried Olga impatiently, “for goodness’ sake stop talking nonsense. I want to hear all about Vera’s life. I wish I could go over to Constantinople and do a little dancing. That is more amusing than this exile on a desert island. Vera, my darling, tell us all about it.”

Vera told them something about it, while Michael’s mother made tea and poured it out into a set of cheap cups which Michael had brought back from Constantinople after selling one of the rings which had been hidden in a sock. He had also bought out of the same proceeds a new pair of shoes for his mother and a brush and comb for Olga, and some stockings—which looked like silk—for Tania. For himself he had picked up a safety razor with six blades, which unfortunately failed to cut.

Vera sat on the edge of his bed. Olga squatted on the floor with her hands round her knees. Tania laid her dark head against the deal chest of drawers.

“It’s a hard life,” said Vera. “Sometimes one gets very tired. I do my Greek dance twelve times between midday and midnight. It’s very dirty behind the scenes and the stench is killing. Sometimes I think we shall all go down with pestilence. Then the hall is filled with tobacco smoke and the reek of wine and stale beer. Sometimes the sailor men get drunk and are sick on the floor.”

“Oh, Vera!” cried Michael’s mother. “Need you tell us all that? It’s too awful!”

Vera looked surprised and lifted her dark eyebrows. She had a long, thin face, with rather high cheek-bones and very bright luminous eyes, and through her pale skin there was a glow of colour.

“I thought you wanted me to tell you about my life. I thought you wanted me to tell the truth.”

“Yes, we do,” said Tania. “Nothing matters but truth. And we have seen so much that nothing is too frank for us. We have seen dead men, and men hanged, and people dying of typhus and every kind of dirt. Why should we be afraid of the truth, mother? You are still very Austrian. You turn your face away from anything unpleasant.”

“Go on, my dear,” said Olga. “I think I shouldn’t mind men being sick sometimes. One is removed from them a little, after all.”

“It’s worse for the programme sellers,” said Vera. “We take turns at that. The men like to see us off the stage and moving about among them. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. A fat old Turk put his arm about me one night and wouldn’t let me go. He spoke bad Russian, but well enough to let me know what he meant.”

“What did he mean?” asked Olga.

“He wanted me to live with him. He had a villa down the Bosphorus. He promised me silk underclothing and jewels, and a bed with fine cushions.”

“Curse him,” said Michael. “If I had been there I would have smashed his face.”

“It wasn’t a bad offer,” said Olga.

Tania smacked Olga’s hand.

“You’re a wretch, Olga! You pretend to have no morality.”

“Olga says these things without understanding them,” said Michael. “She talks like a child. Otherwise I should be very angry.”

Olga laughed at this rebuke from a brother one year younger than herself.

“Hark at the lad! I suppose he thinks he can order us about like a Turk in his harem. But I thought we were listening to Vera’s story, instead of working up to a family quarrel. Go on, Vera, my darling. Everything you say thrills me to the marrowbones.”

Vera smiled at her, and held her hand for a moment. “You haven’t changed since we played together in the Villa Mimosa. I’ve changed from the skin inwards. I seem to have lived a hundred lives.”

She told them more about her life in the Petits Champs as a dancing-girl. She made them laugh by her account of all that happened behind the scenes—the stage fright of girls who had never appeared in public, the quarrels, vanities, rages, tears, of this amateur company of ex-officers and women of the old régime, who rehearsed new scenes half an hour before presenting them, so that everything went wrong. One of the girls—the daughter of Princess Tchernavina—had hysterics one night because she had had nothing to eat all day and found that someone had stolen the handbag in which she had kept her money. Of course there were tremendous love-affairs, tremendous jealousies. One of the men who danced like a Cossack—he had been a bank clerk in St. Petersburg—had threatened to kill Maria Volhovsky because she was too kind to Prince Igor Nicolai Nicolaivitch, who played the big drum. One night all the lights went out and there were wild scenes in the dressing-rooms where the girls were changing for the dance of the sylphs. Vera couldn’t find her leopard skin and was in a state of nature for half an hour.

“I nearly caught my death of cold. Meanwhile, there was a loud uproar in the audience. Some English sailors started fighting with Americans. A young Turk was robbed of his gold watch. It was pandemonium until the lights went up again.”

Tania sat listening to these stories with excited eyes. She gave little screams of laughter and emotion.

“It’s all very fantastic,” she said. “But then life is like that. We’re all living in a fantastic world where anything may happen.”

“Vera,” cried Olga, “for heaven’s sake get me a place in your company. I’ll do anything. I will learn to dance. You will teach me. I will go on as a houri. I will show my beauty of body for the enjoyment of brutal men. Anything, my dear, to get away from Prinkipo, which I’m beginning to find enormously wearisome.”

“No, my dear,” said her mother. “You are too young. You are too wild. I shouldn’t have a moment’s peace of mind.”

“In any case,” said Vera, “there’s not a chance. Every Russian refugee in Constantinople begs for some place in our performance. They come all day long, saying that they can sing, or dance, or play some instrument. And when all expenses are paid there’s very little to go round. We just keep ourselves alive.”

Vera stayed until the last boat went back to Constantinople, in time for her show that evening. Michael walked with her to the landing-stage as his mother and sisters were preparing a meal for a few friends, among whom would be Sacha Dolin and Prince Andreyev, and Captain Boris Gronov with his wife who helped to wash up sometimes in the restaurant over at Pera.

“Prinkipo is very peaceful,” said Vera, walking by the side of Michael and trying to keep pace with his long strides.

“It’s a paradise between two purgatories,” said Michael. “I shall hate to leave it, but the girls are getting impatient with this picnic life. Olga has a romantic imagination. She thinks the future is going to be all roses. Tania is more thoughtful. She knows we shall have a hard struggle, but she has the courage to face it and isn’t afraid. I am afraid.”

“Fear is weakening,” said Vera. “Don’t be afraid, Michael. You are young and strong. Why should you be afraid?”

Michael strode on a few paces more before he explained why he was afraid.

“I’m very ignorant. I ought to have been to a university and learnt some profession. Over here in Europe I shall have to compete with educated men who know things and have something to offer. I’m not afraid for myself, but for mother, who is not too strong, and for the girls whom I shall have to protect. Now that my father is dead I am the head of the family. Everything is on my shoulders.”

“You are very serious,” said Vera. “You haven’t our Russian temperament, Michael. You are rather German, I think, because of your mother.”

Michael shrugged his shoulders.

“The future is not very amusing in its prospect.”

“It’s always an adventure,” said Vera. “That, after all, is what life means. It’s a strange adventure on the way to Heaven. It’s a trial of one’s spirit. God tests our strength and courage. I think God likes to see us go through the test with courage and gaiety, without despair.”

“You believe in God?” asked Michael, looking at her sideways with surprise. “After all the horrors of war and revolution?”

“Somewhere there must be God,” said Vera. “I say my prayers to Him. Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ?”

“Jesus Christ was a good fellow,” said Michael. “I admit that. But I cannot believe that He bothers about humanity.”

“Because humanity betrays Him again, crucifies Him again,” said Vera. “But, even then, I am sure that He still has pity.”

“No,” said Michael. “If there’s a God, He has no pity. If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, He has no pity. I’ve seen innocent children dying in heaps of typhus and starvation. I’ve seen the dead bodies of young girls massacred by Red soldiers. Where, then, is God?”

“God must weep,” said Vera. “Because there is still love and pity in hearts like yours, Michael, there must be the Spirit of Goodness, higher and more wonderful than that of men, and that surely is a proof that beyond this mystery God waits. I’m a dancing-girl. I dance in a leopard skin. But I think sometimes, and I am aware of God. This beauty, Michael, that moonlight touching these old trees, that sea with little waves like silver, you and I walking together with our spirits touching—these vibrations of life, all this awareness of mystery in us—don’t they mean something more than we understand, and bring us very close to eternity and a guiding spirit?”

Michael was silent again as he walked on. He was thinking very deeply. He was much stirred by these words.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel a kind of frisson, as though I heard some voice outside myself. I listen intently, as though I should get some message in my soul. It’s hard to explain. I have moments when everything in the world, everything in the universe, becomes a part of me and when I am a part of everything. It’s a kind of joy. It’s a kind of ecstasy. It is perhaps the nonsense of Russian mysticism, which is another name for imbecility.”

“It’s adolescence,” said Vera, like a wise old woman, though she was only twenty. “It’s the stirring of your manhood, Michael. You feel the rush of the Vital Force which is Life. I believe that you are very near to God when you feel like that.”

It was a strange conversation between these two young people on the island of Prinkipo. But they had seen strange and terrible things, and the adventure of life had made them grave for their years, though in Vera’s case this gravity didn’t last for more than a few minutes now and then. It lay in hiding behind her usual gaiety, her light laughter among other friends, and her joyous rhythm as a dancing girl who had to please her public.

They came to the landing-stage, where a few other refugees were waiting for the steamer. Her lights gleamed from afar in a blue twilight. They were reflected on the smooth sea. On board there was the strumming of a balalaika.

“Let’s take shelter in this shed,” said Michael. “There’s a chilly breeze.”

The shed was empty, and the two young Russians stood there alone.

“Vera,” said Michael, “you said something just now which I shall always remember.”

“Yes?”

“They were kind words. You said that I had love and pity in my heart—like God—though not to the extent of God’s love.”

“As a boy you were like that,” said Vera. “I don’t think you’ve changed. I remember your pity for a wounded bird. I saw your love for your lovely mother, and for Miss Browne who taught you English, and for Olga and Tania, and your dog who was a mongrel.”

Michael took one of her hands and raised it to his lips. “It’s you I shall always love, Vera,” he said huskily. “We have always been good comrades. Now it is more than that. You come to me in my dreams. I shall always dream of you. Will you wait for me in this strange adventure of life, until one day you will marry me?”

Vera was silent and then put her arms about him and kissed him on the forehead.

“Oh, Michael,” she said, “it’s too soon to talk of that. We can’t follow the same adventure. We may be separated for many years, I going my way towards the unknown and you going yours.”

“I shall follow you wherever you are,” said Michael. “I shall come to you one day, even if seas divide us.”

“I shall often think of you, Michael. I shall always wish you courage and good fortune. I shall pray for you.”

“At this moment I have no courage,” said Michael. “You are already leaving me.”

Vera laughed in the lonely shed.

“It’s only fifteen minutes to Constantinople. Come and see me dance one night.”

“I should hate to see you dance before that awful crowd.”

“I will dance to you, if I know you are there.... Heavens! that’s the steamer ready to go. I must rush, Michael.”

She ran like a wild thing. The gangway was down and the passengers had gone aboard. Vera was only just in time, but that was good enough, and she stood and raised her hand to the boy on shore. He stood there motionless until the boat was a pale gleam with little twinkling lights in the dusky twilight which put its veil over the darkening sea. Through the veil a star peeped out.