A day or two after Tueski's funeral, and while the city was still quivering and staggering under the effects of the supposed Nihilist blow, a great ball took place at the Valniski Palace.
Count Valniski was among the richest men in Moscow, bidding hard for power and courting popularity right and left among all classes. To this ball all the officers of my regiment were invited, together with many of their friends. Amongst the latter Olga had a card; and although we were certainly in a poor mood for a function of the kind, we felt it expedient to do what all the world was doing, go to it; lest by remaining away we should attract attention to ourselves.
It was a very brilliant affair, as these big Russian balls always are, and the crowd included many of the best and smartest people in Moscow. I moved about the rooms, not dancing much, but exchanging a word now and then with my brother officers and with other people who claimed acquaintance with me.
Olga had plenty of partners among my comrades, and as she was dancing with one of them I stood watching her and thinking how completely I had dropped into the new social grooves of this Moscow life and how quickly my first feelings of strangeness had worn off, when my friend Essaieff came up to me.
"Alexis, I have a commission that concerns you," he said.
"Well?"
"You're in luck. Try and guess."
"Can't," I replied, shaking my head. "Unless the war's broken out and I'm to have a step. What is it?"
"There's a woman in it. High up, too." There were only two women in Moscow I ever thought about; and one of them I wished to see safe out of Russia, and the other at the devil, or anywhere out of my way.
"Give it up," I said, with a smile.