Again she sat down beside him. Alexei saw the wound. It was a small hole in the upper arm, near the inner surface at the point where the arm lies closest to the body. A thin stream of blood was seeping out of it.

'Wound on the other side?' he asked jerkily and laconically, instinctively conserving the breath of life.

'Yes, there is', she said with horror.

'Tie the tourniquet above it . . . yes, there . . . right.'

There came a new, violent pain, green rings danced before his eyes. Alexei bit his lower lip.

She pulled from one side, he helped from the other end with his teeth and his right hand, until the burningly painful knot encircled his arm above the wound. At once the bleeding stopped.

#

The woman moved him thus: he got to his knees and put his right arm round her shoulder while she helped him to stand up on his weak, trembling legs, and led him into the next room, supporting him with her whole body. Around him in the twilight he saw deep, dark shadows in a very low, old-fashioned room. When she had sat him down on something soft and dusty, she turned aside and turned up the light in a cerise-shaded lamp. He made out a velvet fringe, part of a double-breasted frock-coat and a yellowish-gold epaulette in a frame on the wall. Stretching out her arms to Alexei and breathing heavily from excitement and exertion, she said:

'I have some brandy . . . Perhaps you should have some? . . . Brandy?'

He replied:

'Yes, right away . . .'

And collapsed on to his right elbow.

The brandy seemed to help, at least Alexei began to feel he might not die and might survive the pain which was gnawing and cutting into his shoulder. Kneeling, the woman bandaged his wounded arm, then sidled down to his feet and pulled off his felt boots. This done she brought him a pillow and a long Japanese robe that smelled faintly of a sweet, long-faded perfume and was embroidered with exotic sprays of flowers.

'Lie down', she said.

Obediently he lay down, she spread the robe over him and then a blanket, and stood beside the narrow ottoman looking in to his face.

He said:

'You . . . you're a remarkable woman.' After a silence: 'I'll lie down for a bit until I get my strength back, then I'll get up and go home . . . Just put up with me for a little longer.'

Fear and despair came over him. 'What's happened to Elena? Oh God, and Nikolka. Why did Nikolka have to die? He's dead, for sure . . .'

She pointed silently at a little window, covered by a ruched blind with pompoms. Far away he clearly heard the crack of rifle-fire.

'They'll kill you at once if you try and go now', she said.

'I wouldn't like to drag you into it. .. They may come suddenly, they'll see a revolver, blood . . . there in my greatcoat pocket . . .' He licked his dry lips. He was feeling slightly light-headed from the loss of blood and the brandy. The woman's face looked frightened, then thoughtful.

'No,' she said resolutely, 'no, if they had been going to find you they would already be here by now. This place is such a labyrinth that no one could find our tracks. We crossed through three gardens. But all the same I must clear up at once . . .'

He heard the splash of water, rustle of material, the sound of things being rearranged in closets. She returned holding his

Browning automatic by the butt with two fingers as though it werered hot and asked:

'Is it loaded?'

Pulling out his sound arm from under the blanket, Alexei tested the safety catch and said:

'It won't harm you, but only hold it by the butt.'

She came back again and said in embarrassment:

'Just in case they do come ... I shall have to take off your breeches . . . Then you can lie there and I'll say you're my husband and you're sick . . .'

Frowning and grimacing Alexei began to unbutton his breeches. She walked firmly up to the ottoman and knelt down, then put her hands under the blanket and having pulled off his breeches by the footstraps, folded them up and took them away. In the short time that she was away he noticed that the apartment was divided into two rooms by an arch. The ceilings were so low that if a grown man had stood on tiptoe he could have touched the ceiling with his hand. In the far room beyond the arch it was dark, but the varnished side of an old piano gleamed, there was something else shining and what looked like a flowering cactus. Nearby the wall was dominated by the portrait of the man in gold epaulettes.

God, the place was so full of antiques, it was like a museum! The epaulettes in the portrait fascinated him. A tallow candle in a candlestick gave a gentle light. There had once been peace and now peace was dead. Those years could not be brought back. Behind him were two small, low windows and another at his side. What was this funny little house? She lived alone. Who was she? She had saved him ... no peace . . . shooting out on the streets . . .

#

She came in, laden with a pile of firewood and dropped it noisily in the corner by the stove.

'What are you doing? Why bother?' he asked irritably.

'I had to light the stove anyway', she answered with a hint of a smile in her eyes. 'I can manage . . .'

'Come here', Alexei asked her quietly. 'Look, I haven't thanked

you for everything you've . . . done . . . And I don't know how to . . .' He stretched out his hand and took her fingers. As she obediently drew nearer he kissed her thin wrist twice. Her face softened as though a shadow of anxiety had been lifted from it and in that moment her eyes looked extraordinarily beautiful.

'If it hadn't been for you,' Alexei went on, 'I would certainly have been killed.'

'Of course,' she replied, 'of course you would . . . After all you did kill one of them.'

'I killed one of them?' he asked, feeling a new weakness as his head began to spin.

'M'hm.' She nodded approvingly and looked at Alexei with a mixture of fear and curiosity. 'Oh, it was terrible . . . they almost shot me too.' She shuddered.

'How did I kill him?'

'Well, they leaped round the corner, you began shooting and the man in front fell down . . . Perhaps you just wounded him. Anyway you were brave ... I thought I was going to faint. You were running, turned round and shot at them, then ran on again . . . What are you - a captain?'

'What made you think I was an officer? Why did you shout "officer" at me?'

Her eyes shone.

'I decided you must be an officer when I saw your badge in your fur cap. Why did you have to take such a risk by wearing your badge?'

'Badge? Oh my God, of course ... I see now ...' He remembered the shop bell ringing . . . the dusty mirror ... 'I ripped off everything else - but had to go and forget my badge! I'm not an officer,' he said, 'I'm just an army doctor. My name is Alexei Vasilievich Turbin . . . Please tell me - what is your name?'

'I am Julia Alexandrovna Reiss.'

'Why are you alone?'

Her answer was somehow strained and she looked away as she said:

'My husband's not here at the moment. He went away. And his mother too. I'm alone . . .' After a pause she added: 'It's cold in here. Brrr . . . I'll light the stove.'

#

As the logs burned up in the stove his head ached with growing violence. His wound had stopped hurting him, all the pain was concentrated in his head. It began in his left temple, then spread to the crown of his head and the back of his neck. Some little vein under his left eyebrow tautened and radiated waves of desperate pain in all directions. Julia Reiss knelt down at the stove and raked the fire with a poker. Alternately opening and closing his eyes in pain, Alexei watched her as she turned her head aside from the heat, screening it with her pale wrist. Her hair seemed to be an indefinite color which at one moment looked ash-blond shot with flame, at the next almost gold; but her eyebrows were as coal-black as her eyes. He could not decide whether that irregular profile with its aquiline nose was beautiful or not. The look in her eyes was a riddle. There was fear, anxiety and perhaps - sensuality . . . Yes, sensuality.