"It's so long," said Otway, "since I had any news of Miss Derwent. I can hardly consider myself one of her friends—at least, I shouldn't have ventured to do so until this morning, when I was surprised and delighted to have a letter from her about that Nineteenth Century article, sent through the publishers. She spoke of you, and asked me to call—saying she had written an introduction of me by the same post."
Mrs. Borisoff smiled oddly.
"Oh yes; it came. She didn't speak of the Vyestnik?"
"No."
"Yet she has read it—I happen to know. I'm sorry I can't. Tell me about it, will you?"
The Russian article was called "New Womanhood in England." It began with a good-tempered notice of certain novels then popular, and passed on to speculations regarding the new ideals of life set before English women. Piers spoke of it as a mere bit of apprentice work, meant rather to amuse than as a serious essay.
"At all events, it's a success," said his listener. "One hears of it in every drawing-room. Wonderful thing—you don't sneer at women. I'm told you are almost on our side—if not quite. I've heard a passage read into French—the woman of the twentieth century. I rather liked it."
"Not altogether?" said Otway, with humorous diffidence.
"Oh! A woman never quite likes an ideal of womanhood which doesn't quite fit her notion of herself. But let us speak of the other thing, in the Nineteenth Century—'The Pilgrimage to Kief.' For life, colour, sympathy, I think it altogether wonderful. I have heard Russians say that they couldn't have believed a foreigner had written it."
"That's the best praise of all."