It had been her favourite question as a child.
"I was thinking that I rather wished you were still in Paris." "But why ?" "Because I think you would be safer." "Oh, what nonsense, Quentin dear! Where should I be safe if not in my own Russia, where I have friends--oh, so many, and tribes and tribes of relations?
It is France and England that are unsafe with the German guns grumbling at their doors....

My complaint is that my life is too cosseted and padded.

I am too secure, and I do not want to be secure." The young man lifted a heavy casket from a table at his elbow.

It was of dark green imperial jade, with a wonderfully carved lid.

He took off the lid and picked up three small oddments of ivory--a priest with a beard, a tiny soldier, and a draught-ox.