In the restaurant of the Arbat, Bertram was received with friendly greetings from the husband and wife, and Katia. They were amazed and delighted to find Nadia with him. The elderly man with white hair and a pointed beard kissed her hand respectfully, as the daughter of Prince Alexander Suvaroff, but Katia flung her arms round Nadia’s neck and kissed her on both cheeks.
“You know this English gentleman, then!” cried the lady of the restaurant. “Doubtless you were old friends in England before the war!”
“Not old friends,” said Nadia, “but good comrades now.”
“Do not use that word comrade!” said the lady. “It has been debased. Tavarish! tavarish! tavarish! I am sick of it!”
“In English it is better,” said Nadia. “It has its old meaning still.”
She and Bertram sat at a little table in the corner. Katia waited on them delightedly, kissing Nadia’s neck, or hair, or hand, every time she came to the table. And Nadia was joyful because a white cloth was spread on the table, and there were cut glasses for their cider, which was the only drink, and plates without a crack in them.
“It is like a fairy-tale,” she said. “Not for four years have I sat down with snow-white linen to the board.”
Bertram wondered that she could endure so long a time of squalor, after her life in great mansions, surrounded by luxury from childhood. Did she not sometimes crave to escape from it to Paris or London, like so many others?
She shook her head.
“I want to see this through,” she told him. “It has been a great adventure of the soul. Terrible, but educating. You have been a soldier. You know what our men called ‘the front line spirit?’ I have been in the front line, the danger zone, and have nothing but contempt for those who fled to safe places in the war. Except the old and feeble, and the very young.”