Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/39

 dividing it in two and securing privacy for each of us. Behind the curtain was the door which opened into the dining-room. Close to my bed was a second door which led to the corridor, at the end of which was a bedroom. There were neither long curtains nor blinds to keep out the everlasting light. Some thin and inadequate muslin was drawn across the lower half of the windows, but was too scanty to afford any protection against observers in the building opposite.

On entering the room after the intense fatigue and excitement of the long journey one felt its beauty comforting and refreshing. The fine linen sheets, the soft silk hangings, the eiderdown bed-covers, the thick velvety carpet, the quaint, carved and gilded furniture spoke of gentle living utterly unlooked-for by us, and, to do ourselves justice, undesired by us in a country full of people slowly dying for lack of the barest necessaries. It was the most exaggerated kindness on the part of our hosts, so anxious to make us comfortable and happy, to give us the very best they possessed.

But there, for me, was the trouble. They gave us all this luxury and beauty, but was it theirs to give or ours to receive? They had no doubts on this score whatever. They could see nothing at all in the argument that the present possessor