He sought his chief refuge in Nikitin.

I am aware that in the things I have said of Nikitin, in speaking both of his relation to Andrey Vassilievitch's wife and to Trenchard himself, I have shown him as something of a sentimental figure.

And yet sentimental was the very last thing that he really was.

He had not the "open-heartedness" that is commonly asserted to be the chief glory and the chief defect of the Russian soul.

He had talked to me because I was a foreigner and of no importance to him--some one who would be entirely outside his life.