"It was bad enough in the Free Command," said Constantine, leaning back in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle finger. "But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at the Yakût Yoort."
It was a strange sentence to hear, sitting thus in the commonplace drawing-room of a London house with the baker's boy ringing the area bell and the last edition of the Pall Mall being cried blatantly athwart the street.
But no one could look twice at Constantine Nicolai and remain in the land of the commonplace. I had known him nearly two years, and we had talked much--usually on literary and newspaper topics, seldom of Russia, and never of his experiences. Constantine and I had settled dow
