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girl called Sianova, who held a temporary residence permit. I wasn't home. From the policeman, Tantlérie made two appalling discoveries. First, that my friend had been a member of a group of Mensheviks, or some sort of Russian revolutionaries. Second: she had been the mistress of the group's leader, who had been deported from Switzerland. When I got back late that afternoon, she told me I was to have nothing more to do with a lewd hussy who was being watched by the police, and a revolutionary to boot! I defied her. Give up my Varinka? Never! After all, I was of age. That evening, I packed my bags. Mariette, our elderly maid, helped me. Tantlérie had locked herself in her room. She refused to see me, so I went. Could I turn all this into a novel? But to proceed.
    'I went to live with my friend in town in a ghastly little furnished flat. I had very little money of my own, Daddy having lost almost every penny in some financial collapse known as a "crash". She and I were happy. We used to go off to the University together, me to Humanities and she to Social Sciences. Lived like students. The little eating places. I began using a touch of face-powder, something I'd never done at Tantlérie's. But I never wore lipstick and never shall. It's dirty and it's common. I started learning Russian so I could talk with her and we'd be closer. We slept together. Yes, it was love, but pure, or very nearly. One Sunday, I discovered through Mariette, who often used to come to see me, that my aunt was leaving soon for Scotland. This made me feel awful, because I sensed very strongly that it was the life I was leading that was in effect driving her into exile.
    'A few months later, during the Easter vacation, Varvara told me she had tuberculosis and couldn't go to the University any more.
    She'd kept it from me so I wouldn't worry but also to avoid making our financial situation any worse with rest cures in the mountains. I went to see her doctor at once and he told me that in any case it was too late to send her to a sanatorium and that she had a year to live at most.
    'During that last year of her life, I didn't behave terribly well. Naturally, I'd given up my studies to devote myself entirely to her. I looked after her, made her meals, did the washing and ironing. But in the evenings sometimes I'd suddenly feel like going out and accepting invitations from University friends, usually foreign students, not young men and women from my own set. So now and then I'd go out to dinner or a student hop or the theatre. I knew she was very ill yet I didn't put up much of a fight when I wanted to get away for a while. Varvara, darling, forgive me, I was so young. When I'd get back, I'd feel ashamed and what made it worse was that she never grumbled. But one evening, getting back from a dance at two in the morning, I was wheeling out some excuse or other for being late, when she said quietly: "That's all very well, but I am going to die." I shall never forget the way she looked at me.
    'The day after she died, I looked at her hands. One glance was enough for you to sense how heavy they were, like marble. The sheen was gone, they were a dull white colour and the fingers were swollen. It was then that I knew it was all over, that everything was over.
    'After the funeral, the fear I felt in the tiny flat where she had waited for me to come back at night. So I made up my mind to move into the Hotel Belle Vue. Adrien Deume had just got a job at the League of Nations and since his parents had not then landed on him, he was living in that same hotel. One evening, it dawned on me that I had hardly any money left. Couldn't pay the week's bill. Alone in the world. Not a soul I could turn to. My uncle was in the middle of Africa and my aunt somewhere in Scotland. Anyway, even if I'd had her address, I wouldn't have dared write to her. The people in my set, cousins, distant relatives, acquaintances, had dropped me since I'd run away and started living with "the