The Secret City by Hugh Walpole — Read

That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave -- and beyond it, I expect.

He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough. Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking very quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded blue carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same as it had always been. The storm that had raged all day had now died down, and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big table with the fading tablecloth, on the old brown carpet, on the picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov's musical-box, on the old knickknacks and the untidy shelf of books. (Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were still there. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long day's efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenev's House of Gentlefolks, and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.