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“In England,” says my friend. “But in Russia we have no woman’s movement. She becomes one of Artsibashef’s women, no more; a man’s plaything and fetish.”

Even so.

What has Artsibashef’s play got to do with Russia? It has a good deal to do with her because of thousands such as Katia who are at the cross-roads. With her cross, hard, but loving student Sasha she might have been poor and unhappy, but, on the other hand, she would save her soul’s health. Whereas with her new-found bourgeois Fedor she may easily enter the world and the atmosphere of Jealousy.

Among those I visited at Kief was a certain Vassia, a poverty-stricken doctor who worked from morning to night healing men and women, a specialist in internal diseases but practising in a poor district. He did not receive a fifth of his fees; he healed on trust.

“They come to me suffering: how can I refuse to help?” he would urge when people tried to harden his heart against those who couldn’t pay.

An extraordinarily kind, impracticable fellow, with a flat in complete disorder, with an adopted child but no wife; lazy and thieving servants. Neighbours have stolen much of his furniture, even the ikons from some of the rooms; and the candles burn in the empty corners from which the ikons have been stolen! That is Russian.