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care for the Russians, you know. Not much use you sending us
stuff we can’t print, especially when it’ll cost you God knows
how much a word to cable.”
    A.J. left for Siberia at the beginning of April. Sir Henry declined either
to approve or to disapprove of the arrangement; all he made clear was that
A.J. could not expect any more chances, and that, if he wanted the hundred
pounds, he must go abroad as one of the prime conditions. Siberia was
undoubtedly abroad; its prospects for the emigrant were A.J.’s affair
entirely. During the last week of hectic preparation that preceded the
departure A.J. saw rather little of the old man, and the final good-byes both
with him and with Philippa were very formal.
    No one saw him off at Charing Cross, and he felt positive relief when, a
couple of hours later, the boat swung out of Dover Harbour and he saw England
fading into the mist of a spring morning. Two days afterwards he was in
Berlin; and two days after that in Moscow. There he caught the Trans-Siberian
express and began the ten-days’ train journey to Irkutsk.
    The train was comfortable but crowded, and most of the way he studied a
Russian grammar and phrase-book. Every mile that increased his distance from
London added to a certain bitter zest that he felt; whatever was to happen,
success or failure, was sure to be preferable to book-reviewing in
Bloomsbury. His trouble had always been to know what to write about, and
surely a war must solve such a problem for him. It was an adventure, anyway,
to be rolling eastward over the Siberian plains. He met no fellow-countryman
till he reached Irkutsk, where several other newspaper-correspondents were
waiting to cross Lake Baikal. They were all much older men than he was, and
most of them spoke Russian fluently. They seemed surprised and somewhat
amused that such a youngster had been sent out by the Comet , and A.J.,
scenting the attitude of superiority, preferred the companionship of a young
Italian who represented a Milan news agency. The two conversed together in
bad French almost throughout the crossing of the lake in the ice-breaker. It
was an impressive journey; the mountains loomed up on all sides like
steel-grey phantoms, and the clear atmosphere was full of a queer other-world
melancholy. Barellini, the Italian, gave A.J. his full life-history, which
included a passionate love-affair with a wealthy Russian woman in Rome. A.J.
listened tranquilly, watching the ice spurt from the bow of the ship and
shiver into glittering fragments; the sun was going down; already there was
an Arctic chill in the air. Barellini then talked of Russian women in
general, and of that touch of the East which mingled with their Western blood
and made them, he said, beyond doubt’ the most fascinating women in the
world. He quoted Shakespeare—’Other women cloy the appetites they
feed, but she makes hungry where she most satisfies’—Cleopatra,
that was—Shakespeare could never have said such a thing about any
Western woman. “But I suppose you prefer your English women?” he
queried, with an inquisitiveness far too childlike to be resented. A.J.
answered that his acquaintance with the sex was far too small for him to
attempt comparisons. “Perhaps, then, you do not care for any women very
much?” persisted Barellini, and quoted Anatole France—’De
toutes les aberrations sexuelles, la plus singuličre, c’est la
chasteté.’ “For thousands of years,” he added,
“people have been trying to say the really brilliant and final thing
about sex—and there it is!”
    Barellini was very useful when they reached the train at the further side
of the lake. There was a curious and rather likeable spontaneity about him
that enabled him to do things without a thought of personal dignity (which,
in fact, he neither needed nor possessed), and when he found the train
already full of a shouting and screaming mob, he merely flung himself into