Great Power Cyber Competition
Competing and Winning in the Information Environment
Edited by David V. Gioe and Margaret W. Smith
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ISBN: 978-1-032-54526-4 (hbk)
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7 Competing for Influence: Authoritarian Powers in the Cyber Domain
8 The Logic of Protraction in Cyber Conflict: Peace Would Ruin Me
9 Digital IEDs on the Information Highway: PSYOPS, CYBER, and the Info Fight
L.
MARGARET W. SMITH AND JIM MONKEN
Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance and the Challenges of Military Operations in the Era of Great Power Competition
J.D. MADDOX, CASI GENTZEL, AND ADELA LEVIS 14 Enduring Challenges in Cybersecurity: Responding Quickly and Credibly to Asymmetric Threats
Contributors
Janis Berzins is Director of the Center for Security and Strategic Research at the National Defense Academy of Latvia, a nonresident research fellow and senior advisor at the Swedish Defence University, and a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of New Generation Warfare. Dr. Berzins’ research focuses on the juxtaposition between the theoretical developments of Russian military thought and the operational reality on the ground.
Chaveso L. Cook (COL, United States Army) is a senior fellow with the Center for Junior Officers, a member of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a PhD from Tufts University and master’s degrees from Columbia University and the University of Texas at El Paso and is also the Cofounder and Executive Director of the nonprofit MilitaryMentors.org.
Christopher Cruden is a subject matter expert on the impact of technology on intelligence and military operations. He currently serves as an advisor to the U.S. government and private sector on matters related to intelligence and strategic policy. In this role, he provides guidance and implementation plans to senior staff on a wide range of crucial technology and tradecraft issues. In addition, Chris is a nonresident fellow at Joint Special Operations University.
Sandor Fabian is a former Hungarian Special Forces lieutenant colonel with more than 20 years of military experience. Dr. Fabian is a research associate at the University of Central Florida and a curriculum developer and team leader at LEIDOS. Dr. Fabian’s research has appeared in the Journal of Strategic Security, Defence Studies, Defense & Security Analysis, Special Operations Journal, Combating Terrorism Exchange, Florida Political Chronicle, and the Hungarian Seregszemle Journal
Otto C. Fiala, is contracted to NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) as a Strategic Thinker by Dean Franks LLC. He was previously team lead for Sensitive Activities Research and Development at United States Army Special Operations Command and was also a resistance and resilience planner
at SOCEUR, where he was also the chief editor and writer of the Resistance Operating Concept. He is a retired USAR civil affairs colonel.
Casi Gentzel is a foreign affairs officer with the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) who currently serves as the GEC’s representative to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Prior to joining the GEC in 2016, she served in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.
David V. Gioe is a British Academy Global professor and visiting professor of intelligence and international security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He is also an associate professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy and a history fellow for its Army Cyber Institute. Dr. Gioe is Director of Studies for the Cambridge Security Initiative and is Co-convener of its International Security and Intelligence Program. His analysis does not necessarily reflect any position of the U.S. government or Defense Department.
Mark Grzegorzewski is an assistant professor of cybersecurity at Embry Riddle University in the Security Studies and International Affairs Department. He is also an Army Cyber Institute fellow, Special Operations Journal book review editor, and is affiliated with the Joint Special Operations University, Irregular Warfare Center, and the National Intelligence University. He holds a PhD, MA, and BA in Political Science/Government from the University of South Florida, along with a graduate certificate in globalization studies.
Tara Heidger is a current Special Operations Command-Africa reservist and former active-duty psychological operations senior noncommissioned officer. As a civilian she currently advises U.S. information and influence strategy in Africa. Tara is a recent graduate of Columbia University, where she earned a dual master’s degree in international affairs and urban planning, studying the intersection of East African development and conflict.
Trey Herr, is the Director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) and Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity and Policy at American University’s School of International Service. At the Council his team works on cybersecurity and geopolitics including cloud computing, the security of the internet, supply chain policy, cyber effects on the battlefield, and growing a more capable cybersecurity policy workforce.
David Higgins works for a strategic communications agency and has previously worked for the UK government and United Nations in Somalia, East Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq. David started his career as an active-duty infantry officer and is currently a lieutenant colonel in the British Army Reserve.
Adela Levis is a civil service officer with the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and serves as the GEC Academic and Think-Tank Liaison. Prior to joining the GEC in 2015, she served in the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and in the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
J.D. Maddox supports the U.S. Department of State’s GEC as CEO of Inventive Insights LLC. Maddox previously served as Deputy Coordinator of the GEC, as a branch chief in the Central Intelligence Agency, and as a U.S. Army Psychological Operations Team Leader. Maddox is also an adjunct professor in George Mason University’s Department of Information Sciences and Technology.
Tony Manganello is an assistant professor of National Security Studies at Indiana Wesleyan University where he serves as Department Coordinator for the criminal justice program. He earned a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, and his research focuses on a range of intelligence and security topics. Prior to entering the world of higher education, Tony served 11 years as a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service.
Christopher Marsh, is Director of Research and Analysis in the Institute for SOF Strategic Studies at the Joint Special Operations University, U.S. Special Operations Command. He is the author of several books and dozens of articles on Russian and Chinese domestic, foreign, and defense policies, including Unparalleled Reforms: China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall, and the Interdependence of Transition. He is currently writing a book on great power competition between the United States, Russia, and China.
Marina Miron is working on a British Academy-funded project dealing with the threat of information war emanating from Russia and China and how to counter the current techniques and tools used by those actors, including AI and cyber “weapons.” In addition to the information war, she researches Russian military doctrinal thinking, including doctrines for different branches of the Armed Forces and available and prospective weapons systems, with a particular focus on space assets and electronic warfare systems. Further, Dr. Miron has been working on several UK MoD projects related to human augmentation in the UK Armed Forces and assessing an ethical framework for introducing such technologies in a contemporary defense environment.
Jim Monken has spent nearly 20 years working within the national security, emergency preparedness, risk management, and energy resilience planning spheres. Throughout the past decade he has pioneered programs for critical information sharing, public and private sector integration, and large-scale exercise development and execution. He is also a 2002 graduate of United States Military Academy.
Fabiana Sofia Perera is an associate professor at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute. Prior to joining the Perry Center, Fabiana was a Rosenthal fellow at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, Western Hemisphere Affairs. Fabiana holds an MA in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University and earned a PhD in Political Science from The George Washington University. Her research and analysis have appeared in numerous publications including The Washington Post, CNN.com, and War on the Rocks
List of Contributors
Michael Poznansky is an associate professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a core faculty member in the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. He previously taught in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. His book, In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Dr. Poznansky has held multiple fellowships and is the author of numerous articles in prominent IR and Political Science journals.
Emma Schroeder is an associate director with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative within the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). She works primarily on CSI’s Conflict, Tech, and Markets portfolio, which examines the role of cyber and cyber-enabled technology in conflict and its impact on states, non-state groups, and markets. Within this portfolio of work are three central topics: Conflict in and through Cyberspace, the Proliferation of Offensive Cyber Capabilities, and Combating Cybercrime.
Stewart Scott is an associate director with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). He works on the Initiative’s systems security portfolio, which focuses on software supply chain risk management and open-source software security policy.
Margaret W. Smith, is an active-duty cyber officer in the U.S. Army, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, and graduate faculty at the University of Maryland. Maggie’s research focuses on information and cyber operations, the role of third-party actors in cyberspace, and the role of cyber during conflict. She holds an MPP in intelligence and homeland security policy from Georgetown University and a PhD in Public Policy from The George Washington University. Her research and analysis have appeared in numerous publications including Lawfare, the Modern War Institute at West Point, Public Administration Review, Political Violence, and War on the Rocks
Rod Thornton is an associate professor in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. Prior to academia, he spent nine years in a British Army infantry regiment during the Cold War. On leaving the Army, he went to university to study Russian and Serbo-Croat. After living for a while in both Kiev (now Kyiv) and Moscow, he subsequently went on to undertake a PhD. He has worked at several universities, including two in the Middle East. His research interests are in the general realm of security studies, looking mostly at the Russian armed forces. His publications include a book, Asymmetric Warfare (2008), and many articles on the Russian military. Most recently, his research has focused on Russian military high-tech systems – including cyber and AI – and how they are linked to the conduct of Information Warfare. He is currently writing a paper, with Dr. Marina Miron, on the Russian space program.
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Jayson Warren is an active-duty military intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and PhD (Policy Studies) student at Clemson University. In addition to his graduate studies, he serves as the lead political scientist at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub – an interdisciplinary team analyzing foreign-sponsored disinformation/coordinated inauthenticity campaigns on social media. Jayson holds an AA (equivalent) in Religion from Elet Szava Alapitvany (Hungary); a BA in Government and International Relations; and a MA in Public Policy from Liberty University where he is also a guest professor of Government and Strategic Intelligence.
Jim Worrall is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel with 30 years in the U.S. Army, 21 of those working in SOF. Since retiring, Jim has spent the last six years working in the EUCOM AOR. He is a graduate of the Chilean War College and holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Miami.
1 A Strategic Cyberspace Overview
Russia and China
Mark Grzegorzewski and Christopher Marsh
Introduction
In all U.S. strategy documents, including the latest National Security Strategy (2022) and National Defense Strategy (2022), Russia and China, two revisionist powers, are central to America’s strategy to deter and defeat aggression. Analysis of these two competitors and their strategies is therefore a booming business for analysts and practitioners alike. But while Russia’s “Gerasimov doctrine,” which is not really a doctrine (Galeotti 2019), and China’s “unrestricted warfare” make for interesting conjecture, much more significant is perhaps how these two states and their agencies act in cyberspace. Less often discussed and less well understood is that information operations play a central role in both the Russian and the Chinese ways of war, and cyber applications are a central mode by which information is applied as a tool of warfare by both states. China conceives of “informationized warfare” (Fravel 2015), with the space and cyber domains described as becoming the “commanding heights of strategic competition.” Despite claims to the contrary, both China and Russia see themselves currently engaged in information warfare against the United States. Prior to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this conflict was in part playing out in the cyber realm. Now that Moscow is waging a full-scale war against its neighbor, cyber has become one of many ways the Kremlin is imposing costs on the West (with energy markets being another important aspect).
The military application of information as an instrument of war – in isolation and in conjunction with other tools – is a central component of both Russia’s and China’s modern approaches to warfare. As Chief of the Russian General Staff General Valery Gerasimov himself observed, special operations forces leveraging information operations could be effectively employed to “defend and advance [Russia’s] national interests beyond” its borders (Kramer 2019). China, for its part, has developed and deployed dedicated information operations units skilled in cyber espionage and cyber-enabled information operations. This chapter serves to highlight some of the differences between how the United States, China, and Russia view cyberspace, and analyze the ways Russia and China are using cyberspace operations to engage the United States asymmetrically.
One way in which both Russia and China view cyberspace operations differently than the United States is through their use of domestic proxies to confront opponents. To the United States, there is a distinct line separating the employment of the state’s capabilities from those of private U.S. citizens in cyberspace. Both China and Russia have no qualms about employing commercial companies (Thompson and Lapowsky 2018), “patriotic hackers” (Griffiths 2019), or cybercriminals (Grzegorzewski 2020) on behalf of the state. Among the commercial actors used by Russia and China include the recently deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin-owned Kharkiv News Agency (CSIS 2020) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-associated Sichuan Silence Information organization (BBC 2021) to support their national objectives, and when confronted with evidence of wrongdoing both countries are uncooperative and engage in persistent denial (Ryan et al. 2020; NPR 2021). Such denial is not mere obfuscation, but rather part of their respective deception operations, which both states have long histories employing. Foremost among the Russian commercial disinformation companies is the troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) (Hakala and Melnychuck 2021). Also owned by Prigozhin and based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the IRA has professionalized information manipulation, creating separate departments to focus on article generation, social media commentary, and multimedia operations. While Russia’s intelligence services take the lead in hack-and-dump operations, the IRA serves a related but different mission. The IRA amplifies evocative language and plays on passions to create conflict and disruption in the information space. Chief among the messaging themes used by the IRA is that traditional media and the political system can no longer be trusted. This messaging is executed through what amounts to spamming, meaning if the IRA can get the message out through enough media, the magnitude will overwhelm the information environment. After applying enough pressure to the information sphere, which has already been weakened by attacking its institutional legacy, disinformation in this space just becomes one more piece of information among a plethora of other sources. The goal is that the corrupted narrative becomes as valid a source of information and ultimately trusted alongside traditional institutional knowledge which must compete with foreign information operations. This disruption tears at society’s social fabric and causes citizens to lose trust in one another – and trust is a critical component of social movements and collective action, perhaps the only thing that can counter a state’s malign information activities.
Of course, both China and Russia leave just enough space between the state and these proxy groups so that they can claim plausible deniability. Regarding so-called “patriotic” hacking, a formal tie may not exist between citizens and the state as the individual actors are willing, autonomous agents acting outside of state control (Davis 2007; Fletcher 2011). However, by not dissuading these irregular actors, it demonstrates that both China and Russia see these actors as furthering their national security interests, and that they likely believe they cannot achieve their aims through traditional diplomacy or even military action.
Another important way in which the United States differs from China and Russia is in how it has organized its military to confront adversaries in cyberspace.
Mark Grzegorzewski and Christopher Marsh
In the United States, the government has divided control over cyberspace. While it has created a military command for the cyberspace domain, U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), it also rightfully allows information operations to intersect with each of the other commands. This means there is no particular U.S. military command in charge of information operations as a whole. Rather, all commands share responsibility over this space. Russia and China view cyberspace very differently.
When compared to the United States, Russia, and China claim that traditional notions of sovereignty extend into cyberspace. This view of national and cyberspace sovereignty is undoubtedly influenced by their histories and political cultures. Russia’s view of cyberspace sovereignty is shaped by its imperial history. The current Russian Federation (the largest and most powerful of the Soviet successor states) was deeply influenced by the dissolution of two former empires (that of Imperial Russia and the USSR), both of which exacerbated and even created ethnic and nationalistic problems across its territory (Berls 2021). This problem was overlaid with a traditional Kremlin objective of Russian (both Imperial and Soviet) national strategy, to “expand Russia’s borders as far from the center as possible until Russian forces reach natural barriers or run into countervailing forces” (Berls 2021). Hence, for more than 800 years, from the time of Muscovy to the Soviet era to the present, Russia’s historical experience has conditioned it to view the world in zero-sum terms and to fear the loss of centralized control, including over information and ideas.
To Russia, the information sphere is synonymous with one’s territorial sovereignty, and any external attempt to shape the information space is, therefore, a violation of its sovereignty. This view of sovereignty clashes with the U.S. view linked to its national security strategy that sees “the free flow of information online [as something] that enhances international trade and commerce, fosters innovation, and strengthens both national and international security” (The White House 2018). For the United States and Russia, these two claims are irreconcilable. To Russia, physical and information sovereignty is indivisible, while the U.S. views information as yearning to be free and in America’s national interest to promote open information spaces, both internally and externally. The Russian concern over the loss of information is so powerful that it claims the U.S. corrupted the minds of Soviet citizens with Western ideas and was behind the “parade of sovereignties” that led to the collapse of the USSR (Kahn 2000).
Russian Cyberspace Operations
For Russia, a core tenet of successful information operations is to be at war with the United States, without Americans even knowing it (and the Kremlin can and does persistently deny it). The Kremlin views cyberspace holistically (Connell and Vogler 2016), to include electronic warfare, psychological operations, and information operations (including information war, or informatsionnaya voina).1 Russia refers to its capabilities as “information weapons” (Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation 2011), which are essentially anything that broadly affects
the human mind, ranging from disinformation to spoofing Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates to destroying a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). In Russia, the government has taken a much different view of cyberspace than the U.S. government has, particularly the linking of cyberspace operations to special operations (Smith 2018). The Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff (the rough equivalent of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA) has primacy in external cyberspace operations, to include espionage, information warfare, and offensive cyberspace operations. This comprehensive approach creates interesting synergies for the Russian military. In addition to the GRU, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has a domestic operations division with an internal security and counterintelligence (CI) mission. The FSB (part of the former KGB) also undertakes external cyberspace operations stemming from its CI responsibilities.
Consequently, its external operations sometimes conflict with the GRU’s cyberspace operations due to poor coordination (indeed, poor coordination and C2 plagues Russian special operations in general (Marsh 2017), as seen most clearly in the 2004 Beslan school tragedy (Giduck 2005). As another example, both the GRU and FSB unknowingly targeted the Democratic National Committee (Waterman 2016) at the same time for a hack-and-dump operation. This clearly exemplifies that bureaucratic infighting and friendly fires are not a uniquely American experience. Thankfully for the United States, its competitors are also bureaucratically inept.
The final major Russian agency involved in cyberspace operations is the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which conducts espionage on behalf of the Russian state, and has become quite adept at cyber espionage operations as recently evinced in the SolarWinds hack (Congressional Research Service 2022). The SVR displayed its cyber espionage expertise in this massive attack, in what amounted to a digital supply chain hack. The SVR hacked the IT monitoring and management company, SolarWinds, whose IT performance monitoring system, Orion, provided privileged access to systems. The Orion software was exploited by hacking a thirdparty vendor and installing malware, which was then pushed out as an update to SolarWinds’ 30,000 U.S. clients (18,000 actually installed this update) (TempleRaston 2021). This malware, pushed out as a genuine update, was not picked up by antivirus software. Once installed, it gave the SVR access into the IT systems of SolarWinds customers and allowed it to move laterally to other networks since the Orion hack provided data on its customer’s customers. Dmitri Alperovitch has spoken on the restraint shown by Russia in this hack. Of the 18,000 compromised accounts, only 250 of them have been exploited. To Alperovitch, this allows Russia to hide among the noise by precisely targeted specific accounts while retaining its stealth (CSIS 2021).
As another example of its work, the SVR targeted at least 150 aid groups in May 2021 (BBC 2021). According to Microsoft, the SVR team compromised a genuine USAID e-mail marketing account and in so doing sent out e-mails with a link to organizations in 24 countries. Once the link was clicked, it allowed the SVR to steal data and infect other computers on the network.
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Unlike the United States, Russia is not known to have a definitive cyberspace strategy, policy directive, or doctrine (Lilly and Cheravitch 2020). Therefore, what researchers understand about Russian operations and activities in cyberspace is derived from the writings of Russian military scholars and official documents, and even teaching materials at the nation’s various military academies.2 From these sources, it is apparent that the Russian government views cyberspace primarily in terms of “information confrontation” (Helmus et al. 2018) and the technical infrastructure used to control information. To shape and control information, the Russian military takes a “hybrid” approach, integrating “a wide range of overt and covert military, paramilitary, and civilian measures,” resulting in a challenging tactical and operational approach (NATO 2014). This includes the use of “special operations forces and non-kinetic political, economic, or informational measures.” Therefore, cyber is a central component of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare model, or what Russia refers to as “indirect and asymmetric methods” (Bartles 2016a,b).
Russian information operations are among the best in the world and Russia does not refrain from employing them. Indeed, Russia believes that the tools of information warfare must be brought to bear early and often. To Russia, there is no distinction between information operations, to include those occurring in cyberspace, during times of war or peace (Connell 2017). That said, by employing information operations before the start of a kinetic conflict – as was done in Estonia in 2007 –Russia may be able to achieve its desired strategic aims without having to resort to kinetic military operations. Even where it is still necessary to use kinetic force (e.g., the Russo-Georgian War of 2008), information operations are nevertheless synergistic with the application of military force by, for example, attempting to degrade the resolve of the opposing military force.
Control of information has been critical throughout Russia’s authoritarian past, during tsarist times, continuing during the Soviet era, and now under the current authoritarian Putin regime. All these governments came to realize that when they control information, they can also shape the course of events within the country. Conversely, when they lose control of information, such as during the glasnost’ period, the government cannot control the narrative and may lose legitimacy among the population, resulting in chaos. Therefore, since Russia understands how susceptible it is to losing control over its own information space, it has also come to realize how vulnerable other countries are in this space, especially those countries that have deep societal cleavages. Russia has used its control over domestic media outlets and Russian cyberspace to maintain its control over the population (Hakala 2021). While Russian citizens can purchase virtual private networks (VPN), they are sold by the state, thereby guaranteeing no real privacy while using the VPN. Moreover, because of policy choices made by both the West and Russia, most technology products are indigenously produced in Russia, meaning the Russian state can simply tap into whatever connected devices it likes. In this environment, there is little space for political resistance to Putin or for any political agitation.
While Russia has become very proficient at disinformation campaigns to exploit societal cleavages, it is most adept when it can amplify or augment existing homegrown narratives (Rid 2020). For example, Russia has long sought to exacerbate
racial tensions in the United States. Russia was also implicated in a disinformation campaign to discredit the World Anti-Doping Agency (Nimmo et al. n.d.) as a “whole-of-society” approach (the operations include actors beyond the government) to highlight Western moral hypocrisy and undermine international institutions. More recently, Russian information operations headed by either the GRU or the FSB have targeted left-leaning organizations, like Peace Data (Stubbs 2020), and right-leaning platforms, like Parler (Graphika 2020), to exacerbate existing tensions and racial/ethnic cleavages in the United States. While it may seem odd to support both left-leaning and right-leaning organizations, it is part of the Kremlin’s plan to simply sow divisive discord among the population as a whole. Although these actions happen in and through cyberspace, we should not view cyber operations as separate from actions in the physical world. As Martin Libicki (2021) has noted, cyber operations are actually a symptom rather than the disease. Expressed differently, most nation-state acts in and through cyberspace are often in reaction to geopolitical tensions. They are an effort to respond to an action below a level that would trigger armed conflict. This claim finds resonance in the 2021 Russian build-up of military forces along the Ukrainian border. As the Ukrainian government rallied against this build-up of forces, Ukrainian customers, including critical infrastructure, saw a 200% increase in targeting by Russia (Microsoft 2021). Further, the top three countries targeted by Russian cyberspace operations are the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. Not uncoincidentally, these three countries are also on the list (of eight) countries that Russia considers to be “unfriendly countries” (Microsoft 2021). Cyberspace has become one area in which Russia has capitalized on the asymmetric power of operations and activities within the information space (Jasper 2020). As alluded to previously, the United States and Russia understand the domain and how to employ effects in and through cyberspace very differently. As such, the United States and Russia are fundamentally at odds over any sort of cyberspace “rules of the road” (CSIS 2018). The U.S. push to institutionalize certain behavior in cyberspace (U.S. Department of State 2014; White House 2021) comes from a preference to cement its national interests in cyberspace and keep any future cyberspace rules favorable to U.S. interests. Put another way, a key goal of the United States and other Western liberal democracies is to “maintain a free, stable and open Internet, where fundamental rights and freedoms are ensured” (NATO 2021). This finds expression in the liberal-democratic tradition of openness and transparency and shapes how countries behave and respond in cyberspace (Libicki 2021). For instance, the United States – which is shaped by its own history, experiences, cultures, geography, and norms – has led the post–World War II international order while promulgating the ideology that all countries and peoples yearn to be free. To the United States, this desire to be free is innate and modern borders should not act as an impediment to the spread of freedom. Information should be able to traverse geographic boundaries to allow people to make more informed, and representative, decisions.
This tension between information and control also impacts the United States. In fact, the same belief that information yearns to be free applies within the United
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States. In a liberal democracy, a cyber operation is not likely to stay secret for very long. Investigative journalism, public affairs, and requests for information (including through the Freedom of Information Act), all keep the public informed about cyberspace actions that the U.S. government wishes were not public (e.g., Orion breach (New York Times 2021). In contrast, in Russia’s authoritarian system of government, control over information is nearly complete. This means that although Russia may suffer from an embarrassing cyberspace operation, it is less likely that this information will ever be admitted publicly. Russia’s sovereignty, including in cyberspace, keeps it from acknowledging any adversarial cyberspace action ever took place since any admission would signal that their sovereignty is not complete and that their government is weak. The lack of agreement over cyberspace has particular significance in three areas: espionage, information warfare, and offensive cyberspace operations.
Russian cyberspace espionage is conducted to gather not only intelligence relating to national security, but also economic intelligence. Most recently, Russia was suspected of attempting to hack into pharmaceutical companies in search of COVID-19 research data (Satter 2020). This hacking activity is an unsurprising development to those familiar with Russian strategy. As stated by Gen. Gerasimov (Bartles 2016a,b), Russia must leverage all elements of national power, and this includes cyber espionage, and cyber-enabled economic warfare (Zilberman 2018) to shape the information space and degrade an adversary’s capabilities (CRS 2020). One of the more infamous acts of Russian cyber espionage involved a cutout group called the Shadow Brokers (Newman 2018), which likely leveraged the work of the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky to locate National Security Agency (NSA)developed malware. This malware was possibly found among classified materials that an NSA contractor brought home and operated on his personally owned computer (Shane 2017). The EternalBlue exploits employed by Shadow Brokers subsequently wreaked havoc across the world (Avast 2020).
When it comes to offensive cyberspace operations, or what the U.S. military describes as deny, degrade, disrupt, destroy, and manipulate (D4M) operations, the GRU is the primary actor. The GRU’s dominance makes sense given that the SVR and FSB are more focused on espionage. Since the GRU is a military organization, which helps explain the high tolerance for collateral damage, its offensive cyberspace operations are traditionally known for being blunt and reckless, as seen in the NotPetya attack (Greenberg 2018), the Saudi petrochemical attack (Greenberg 2020), or the attacks against Ukraine’s power grid (Greenberg 2020). Nonetheless, the GRU has adapted and is now using publicly available penetration tools to hide among the noise and custom malware to avoid detection (Parsons and Raff 2019). The technical sophistication of in-house exploits has allowed Russia to “focus more on advanced intrusion tactics like credential harvesting, supply chain compromises, and infiltrating critical service provider platforms” (Wolff 2021). Despite these advances, Russia still largely prefers to target existing exploits rather than finding new zero days (Wolf 2021), and utilizes a low-tech method of registering domain names similar to popular websites to engage in phishing (Crowdstrike 2019).
Furthermore, in the post–Cold War era, Russia has complained as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has expanded up to its borders, including bringing in the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 2004. Russia views NATO, formerly a collective defense military alliance focused on the threat from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states of Eastern Europe, as decreasing its security and in fact making conflict more likely. NATO, to Russia, is led by the United States, its main rival, and consequently a genuine threat to its security should a conflict break out (Ziegler 2020). As a result, Russia has employed information operations against NATO to divide it, scanned NATO networks to look for vulnerabilities, and engaged in espionage to determine NATO’s intentions (Hakala 2021). The campaign, dubbed Ghostwriter, was an aggressive anti-NATO messaging campaign targeting Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland (FireEye 2019). The campaign spread lies, such as the United States was bringing COVID to Europe during training exercises and that NATO was making the region less secure. The campaign posted to third-party websites using user-submitted content. This content was eventually picked up by legitimate news sources and further spread. The culmination of the campaign was achieved when the Polish War Studies Academy posted a falsified letter on their website calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops from the country (Lyngaas 2020). The information campaign theme, of creating and exacerbating division between European and NATO allies, is not a new theme to the Russians. Rather, they are updating their traditional information campaigns to capitalize on digital interconnectedness by taking social media’s scale and amplification qualities to reach a new audience, and then quickly overwhelm them with mis- and disinformation to first establish the narrative. In essence, it is digital judo wherein Russia is taking the West’s strength, digital interconnectedness, and reframing that advantage as a weakness and therefore an optimal target. Russia’s cyberspace operations have also hit the United States homeland as in 2018, as the U.S. government accused Russia of running a 2-year intrusion campaign against its power grid (Hlavek 2020). While these cyberspace operations may be D4M operations, others may have been attempts at either mapping networks or preparing the battlefield for usage in wartime. It is simply hard to attribute intent in these cases. It is all about the operator’s decision: either use the access for espionage or operations. Cyberspace operations, with their scalability, deniability, and limited resourcing, remain a deliberate tool to challenge the U.S. short of war (NATO 2021). These types of aggressive cyber actions that cause real-world effects will allow Russia to be a formidable force when combined with its traditional strengths in information operations and the insights gleaned through cyber espionage.
Chinese Cyberspace Operations
Much like Russia, China also sees information operations as central to its conception of strategic competition in cyberspace (International Institute for Strategic Studies 2019). Unlike Russia, however, which primarily focuses on an adversary’s perception, China focuses more on imposing “adverse physical and technical effects on the opposing system” (Layton 2021). As a point of comparison, from
Mark Grzegorzewski and Christopher Marsh
July 2020 to July 2021, China targeted 13% of U.S. critical infrastructure for potential disruption operations whereas Russia only targeted 2% during that same period (Microsoft 2021). Given this priority, one can conclude that the CCP – and by extension its defender, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – views information operations via space, cyber, and electronic warfare as the “tip of the spear” in any future conflict to shape the narrative and obtain information superiority, thereby paralyzing a more powerful enemy (Kania and Costello 2018).
China further expanded upon its conceptualization of cyberspace with the creation of the Strategic Support Force (SSF) in 2015, part of China’s military rejuvenation campaign with goals such as “build[ing] a world-class army” that can “win modern wars” (People’s Liberation Army of China 2013). Some analysts view the SSF as an enhanced Chinese counterpart to USCYBERCOM. The SSF not only focuses on the traditional D4M operations of USCYBERCOM, but has also added space, electronic, and psychological warfare to their repertoire. Housing these different but complementary cyber-enabled capabilities within the same command is expected to create synergies that these capabilities cannot achieve on their own (Ng 2020). Moreover, having a suite of functions under the same command during peacetime will give the CCP and PLA the ability to seamlessly transition to an integrated campaign during wartime (Kania et al. 2018). Unlike the SSF – which focuses more on wartime capabilities – the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which has grown significantly under Xi Jinping, focuses primarily on economic espionage and fuels China’s “private sector” innovation (The Economist 2021).
While China has not openly published a cyberspace strategy, scholars and practitioners are in widespread agreement as to the CCP’s aims. It seeks to control the flow of information to and within China to ensure domestic stability (Chang 2014) (and halt the efforts of “splittists” [separatists] who seek the disintegration of the PRC), and preserve economic growth through commercial espionage (Segal 2018). By controlling dissent and driving economic growth, the CCP seeks to ensure that it maintains power.
China views the information space as just one component within cyberspace. For the CCP, to remain in power, it must assert complete dominance over its information space (Beecroft 2021). This creates opportunities for cyberspace investments by CCP-friendly Internet companies and allows the CCP to retain complete control over anything it finds objectionable in its information space (Associated Press 2021). This digital surveillance architecture scans the Chinese information space for any promotion of the “Three Evils”: terrorism, extremism, and separatism (Richards 2021).
China asserts that just as every state is the sovereign within its own borders, each should likewise be the sovereign within its own cyberspace (Dou 2016). Cyber sovereignty challenges the U.S. view that information should be allowed to flow freely across borders (Chang 2014). China considers the control of information internally to be as vital as “controlling the maritime domain in the eighteenth century or controlling the air domain in the twentieth century” (Kolton 2017). Therefore, to maintain harmony within China and produce disruptive effects
beyond its borders, China has increasingly improved its information operations throughout recent years.
Regarding sustaining economic growth, China’s operations against economic targets and the commercial sector are viewed by former USCYBERCOM commander General Keith Alexander as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” (Alexander 2012). Through the complete “informationalization” of their economy, which completely intertwines the CCP, China’s economy, and Chinese society, the Chinese economy continues to grow (Beecroft 2021). Informationalization extends from the CCP’s control over domestic social media spaces to the new Digital Currency Electronic Payment to social credit scores, which all serve the dual purpose of controlling information internally and promoting Chinese economic interests (Harvard 2021).
While the CCP continues to claim that cyber economic espionage is not the work of the government but rather criminal elements within China (Chang 2014), the cybersecurity group FireEye (FireEye 2021) has been able to identify with a high degree of certainty that there are at least ten advanced persistent threats (APTs) operated by the CCP, nine of which focus on industrial espionage. Moreover, China has left just enough plausible deniability and Chinese hackers to feign ignorance. Hackers emanating from China targeting intellectual property may in some cases work for front companies, contractors, or maybe security researchers (Perlroth 2021). It is unknown whether Chinese hackers are receiving guidance from the CCP, or whether they are moonlighting while the state turns a blind eye to their activities.
In addition to these government-supported APTs, China also has a very large patriotic hacker community that it can mobilize when needed (Siboni 2012). Due to the extensive cyberspace dragnet that the CCP has put in place, the government is aware of the activities of these hackers and can stop them when it so desires (Chang 2014). However, the CCP has also employed this hacker network as an extension of the state while at the same time retaining plausible deniability since these patriotic hackers are not formally part of the state apparatus (Applegate 2011). Due to the strong sense of Chinese nationalism, coupled with historical grievances over imperialism, many Chinese patriotic hackers feel a strong sense to “defend” their homeland and push back against what they perceive to be modern Western imperialism (Richards 2021). As a consequence, patriotic hackers are viewed as national heroes within their country for “restor[ing] China’s honor, glory, and integrity” (Kassner 2013).
The CCP’s firm hold on power is a function of both its ability to maintain economic growth and its control over the flow of information in China. This explains why both economic cyberspace espionage and information operations have seen increased investment by the Chinese military in recent years (U.S. Department of Defense 2018). Moreover, the CCP has leveraged China’s commercial sector to support the state’s interests, as seen by the “Made in China 2025” campaign that encourages Chinese companies to create dual-use technologies, which can also be employed by the military (U.S. Department of Defense 2018). This coupling of the state and private sector is seen in China’s Cyber Security Law and National
Mark Grzegorzewski and Christopher Marsh
Intelligence Law, the latter of which necessitates that “any organization and citizen shall, in accordance with the law, support, provide assistance, and cooperate in national intelligence work, and guard the secrecy of any national intelligence work that they are aware of” (Hoffman et al. 2018).
China has also begun setting international standards for digital technology (Pop et al. 2021). Filling the international bodies that the U.S. has long since abandoned, the CCP has found value in shaping international institutions in ways that favor China’s national interests. Standard setting serves the CCP’s interest by both allowing it to regulate the framework that technology companies will use both to manufacture and control information technology. This technology is both employed by China and exported around the world, often as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), are part of China’s digital authoritarian model to control information and push for digital sovereignty (Sherman 2021; Attrill et al. 2021).
The pervasiveness of the CCP attempt to control information, both foreign and domestic, can be found in its recent deployment of social media surveillance technology (Cadell 2021). The invasive and pervasive technology deployed by the CCP mines social media accounts to create a database of foreigners that comment on hot-button issues such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Uyghurs. Ultimately, this surveillance technology, coupled with the estimated $7 billion the CCP spends annually on Internet censorship (Inkster 2022), allows the CCP to both monitor the external and internal information environment and shape how its citizens – and the world – view China.
The Chinese state does not employ externally focused information operations nearly as effectively as their Russian counterparts. However, the Chinese state is constantly learning, and has likely gleaned a lot from Russia’s successful 2016 influence operations in the U.S. political space (Brandt and Schafer 2020). Traditionally, the Chinese state focused most of its information operations internally to maintain domestic and regime stability. This made tremendous sense in the wake of both the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union (which feared a similar fate; Marsh 2006). However, this slowed under Hu Jintao but then exploded under the rise to power of Xi Jinping, now in his unprecedented third term. Under Xi, China has shifted some of its information operations from being used primarily for domestic control to influencing the external environment (Diresta et al. 2020). This is most evident in China’s projection of a newfound muscular international image (dubbed “wolf warrior diplomacy” after the recordsetting Chinese film franchise) (Brandt and Taussig 2020), and in its defensiveness over COVID-19. China seeks to influence the environment post–COVID by demonstrating that its top-down authoritarian methods are superior to the West’s deliberative, and messy, approach to governing (Manantan 2021). One asymmetric tool of the CCP to covertly push its preferred narrative are the TikTok (ByteDance) and WeChat (Tencent) platforms (Ryan et al. 2020). Both companies have internal CCP committees “to ensure that the party’s political goals are pursued alongside the companies’ commercial goals” (Ryan et al. 2020).
Moreover, as China attempts to increase its security in Asia (Wuthnow 2017), it has started targeting countries in the Mekong Region (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar,
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wonderful it is to see such an absence of trickery, you know, such simplicity. Does he live here?
No, he just brings his books in here when it's too cold in his own room.
He is poor? Yes.
He is poor!
Not very poor, you know When he really gets down to his last cent he can always find things to do at once. He's happy to be poor
And he lives quite alone?
Yes. Oh, yes.
And he is poor. (This caused her a moment's astonished reflection, until she burst out:) But you know, that is not right! It is society's duty ... that is, society should be proud to protect such people. Someone very gifted should be appointed to watch over such people.
But, Princess, James Blair values his independence above everything. He doesn't want to be watched over.
They should be watched over in spite of themselves. Look, you will bring him to tea some day. I am sure my husband's library has some more old maps of the Campagna. We have the bailiff's reports of the Espoli back into the Sixteenth Century. Wouldn't that bring him?
Even surprised at herself, the Princess tried for a time to talk of other things, but presently she returned to praise what she called Blair's single-mindedness; she meant his self-sufficiency, for while we are in love with a person our knowledge of his weaknesses lies lurking in the back of our minds and our idealization of the loved one is not so much an exaggeration of his excellences as a careful "rationalization" of his defects.
When next I saw Blair he wasted two or three hours before he got up courage to ask me who she was. He listened darkly while I spoke my enthusiasm. At last he showed me a note in which she asked him to drive with her to Espoli, look over the estate, and to examine the archives. He was to bring me if I wanted. James wished greatly to go;
but he was suspicious of the lady. He liked her and yet he didn't. He was trying to tell me that he only liked ladies who didn't like him first. He twisted the letter about trying to decide, then going to the table wrote a note of refusal.
Then began what it is merely brutal to call a siege. Driving in the Corso Alix would say to herself: There's nothing unconventional in my stopping at his room to see if he wants to drive in the Gardens. I could do as much for a dozen men and it would be perfectly natural. I am much older than he is, so much so, that it would merely be an act of ... thoughtfulness. When she stood on the platform before his door (for she was not content to send up the chauffeur) she would experience a moment of panic, wishing to recall her ring, imagining when no one answered that he was in hiding behind the closed door, listening, who knows, in anger or contempt to her loud heartbeats. Or she would debate all evening among the gilt chairs of her little salon as to whether she might drop him a note. She would count the days since last she had spoken to him and gauge the propriety (the inner, the spiritual propriety, not the wordly propriety: for the Cabalists the latter had ceased to exist) of a new meeting. She was always coming upon him by accident in the city (she called it her proof of the existence of guardian angels) and it was with these chance meetings that she had generally to content herself. She would attract his attention the length of the Piazza Venezia and carry him to whatever destination he confessed to. No one has ever been happier than Alix on these few occasions when she sat beside him in her car. How docilely she sat listening to his lecture; with what tenderness she secretly noticed his tie and shoes and socks: and with what intensity she fixed her gaze upon his face trying to imprint upon her memory the exact proportions of his features, the imprint that indifference retains so much better than the most passionate love. There was a possibility that they might have become the most congenial of friends, for he dimly sensed that there was something in her that allied her to the great ladies of his study. If she had only succeeded in concealing her tenderness. At the first signs of his liking for her she would become so intoxicated with the intimation of cordiality that she would make some shy little remark with a faintly sentimental implication; she would comment on his appearance or ask him to lunch. And lose him.
One day he gave her a book that had been mentioned in their conversations. He did not stop to think that it was the first move he had made spontaneously in the whole relation. Hitherto every suggestion, every invitation, had proceeded from her (from her, trembling, presuffering a rebuff, lightly) and she longed for a first sign of his interest. When this book was brought to her, then, she lost her balance; she thought it justified her in pushing the friendship on to new levels, to almost daily meetings, and to long comradely lazy afternoons. She never realized that in his eyes she was, first, an enemy to his studies, and second, that strange hedged monster which all his wide reading had not been able to humanize: a married woman. She called once too often. Suddenly he changed; he became rude and abrupt. When she climbed his stairs he did hide behind the door and the bell rang in vain and with a menacing sound, though she had her ways of knowing he was in. She became terrified. Again she confronted that cavern of horror in her nature: she seemed always to be loving those that did not love her. She came to me, distraught. I was cautious and offered her philosophy until I could sound Blair in the matter.
Blair came to me of his own accord. He paced up and down the room, bewildered, revolted, enraged. His stay in Rome had become impossible. He no longer dared remain in his room and when he was out he clung to the side streets. What should he do?
I advised him to leave town.
But how could he? He was in the middle of some work that. Some work that. Damn it all. All right, he'd go.
I begged him before he went to come to dinner with me once when the Princess would be present. No, no. Anything but that. I, in turn, became angry I analyzed the different kinds of fool he was. An hour later I was saying that the mere fact of being loved so, whether one could return it or not, put one under an obligation. More than an obligation to be merely kind, an obligation to be grateful. Blair did not understand, but consented at last on the difficult condition that I was not to reveal to the Princess that he was leaving for Spain on the very night of the dinner
Of course, the Princess arrived early, so enchantingly dressed that I fairly floundered in admitting her. She held tickets for the opera; one no
longer cared to hear Salome, but Petrushka was being danced after it, at ten-thirty. Blair's train left at eleven. He arrived and played his most gracious. We were really very happy, all of us, as we sat by the open window, smoking and talking long over Ottima's excellent zabiglione and harsh Trasteverine coffee.
It was a continual surprise to me to see that in Blair's presence she was always a proud detached aristocrat. Even her faintly caressing remarks were such as would not be noticed if one had let them fall to someone with whom one was not secretly in love. Her fastidious pride even drove her to exaggerating her impersonality; she teased him, she pretended she did not hear when he addressed her, she pretended she was in love with me. It was only when he was not present that she became humble, even servile; only then could she even imagine calling on him unasked. At last she rose: It's time to go to the Russian Ballet, she said.
Blair excused himself: I'm sorry I must go back and work.
She looked as though a sword had gone through her. But surely, three-quarters of an hour with Stravinsky is a part of your work. My car's right here.
He remained firm. He too had a ticket for that night.
For a moment she looked blank. She had never met obstinacy under such conditions and did not know what to do next. After a moment she bent her head and pushed back her coffee-cup. Very well, she said lightly. If you can't, you can't. Samuele and I shall go.
Their parting was grim. During the drive to the Constanzi she remained silent, fingering the folds of her coat; during the ballet she sat at the back of the box thinking, thinking, thinking, with staring dry eyes. At the dose scores of friends pressed about her in the corridor. She became gay: Let's go to the cabaret run by the Russian refugees, she said. At the door of the cabaret she dismissed her chauffeur, telling him that her maid need not sit up for her. We danced for a long time in silence, her depression stealing back upon her.
When we left the hall the unfriendliest moonlight in the world was flooding the street. We found a carriage and started towards her home. But falling into the most earnest conversation in all our acquaintance
we failed to notice that the carriage had reached her door and had been standing there for some time.
Look, Samuele, do not make me go to bed now. Let me go in and change my clothes quickly. Then let us drive about and watch the sun come up over the Campagna. Would that make you angry with me?
I assured her that it was just what I wanted and she hurried into the house. I paid off the driver who was drunk and quarrelsome and when she rejoined me we strolled through the streets talking and gradually inviting a resigned drowsiness. We had experimented with vodka at the cabaret and the alcohol conferred upon our minds the same mood that the moonlight was shedding upon the icy bubble of the Pantheon. We strayed into the courtyard of the Cancelleria and criticized the arches. We returned to my rooms for cigarettes.
Last night I wasn't at all brave, she said, lying back in the darkness on the sofa. I was desperate. That was before I received your invitation. Could I go to see him or couldn't I? A week had gone by. I asked myself would he feel ... well, insulted, if a lady knocked on his door at ten o'clock. It was about ten o'clock. Really, there's nothing peculiar about a lady's paying a perfectly impersonal call at about nine-thirty. There's nothing self-conscious, Samuele, about my being here now, for instance. Besides I had a perfectly good reason for going. He asked me what I thought of La Villegiatura, and since then I had read it. Now tell, my dear friend, would it have been ridiculous from the American point of view if I had...?
Beautiful Alix, you are never ridiculous. But wasn't your meeting with him tonight all the fresher, all the happier, just because you hadn't seen him for so long?
Oh, how wise you are! she cried. God has sent you to me in my trouble. Come by me and let me hold your hand. Are you ashamed of me when you have seen me suffer so? I suppose I should be ashamed. You see me without any dignity. You have kind eyes and I am not ashamed in front of you. I think you must have loved too, for you take all my foolishness as a matter of course. Oh, my dear Samuele, every now and then the thought comes over me that he despises me. I have all the faults that he hasn't. When I have this nightmare that he not only dislikes me but laughs at me, yes, laughs at me, my heart stops beating
and I blush for hours at a time. The only way I can save myself then is by remembering that he has said many kind things to me; that he sent me that book; that he has asked after me. And then I pray God very simply to put into his mind just a bit of regard for me. Just a bit of respect for those things ... those things that other people seem to like in me.
We sat in silence for a time, her feverish hand plunged deep into mine and her bright eyes gazing into the darkness. At last she began speaking again in a lower voice:
He is good. He is reasonable. When I am analytical this way I unfit myself for his loving me. I must learn to be simple. Yes. Look, you have done so much for me, may I ask for one more favor. Play to me. I must get out of my mind that wonderful music where Petrushka wrestles with himself.
I felt ashamed of playing before her who played far better than any of us, but I drew out my folios and started right through Gluck's Armide. I had hoped that the inept performance would awaken an æsthetic annoyance and so shake her out of her dejection, but I presently saw that she had fallen asleep. After a long and adroit diminuendo I left the piano, turned on a shaded light near her, and stole off into my own room. I changed my clothes and lay down ready for the walk in which we were to see the sun rise. I was trembling with a strange happy excitement, made up partly of my love and pity for her, and partly from the mere experience of eavesdropping on a beautiful spirit in the last reaches of its pride and suffering. I was lying thus, proud and happy in the role of guardian, when my heart suddenly stopped beating. She was weeping in her sleep. Sighs welled up from the depths of her slumber, hoarse protests, obstinate denials and moans followed one upon another. Suddenly her broken breathing ceased and I knew she was awake. There was a half-minute of silence; then a low call: Samuele.
Hardly had I appeared at the door before she cried: I know he despises me. He runs away from me. He thinks me a foolish woman who pursues him. He tells the servant to tell me he is out, but he stands behind the door and hears me go away. What shall I do? I'd better not live. I'd better not live any more. It's best, dear Samuele, that I go out
right now, in my own way, and stop all this mistaken, this, this, futile suffering of mine. Do you see?
She had arisen and was groping for her hat. I really have courage enough tonight, she muttered. He is too good and too simple for me to worry him as I do. I'll just slip out ...
But Alix, I cried. We love you so. So many people love you.
You can't say that people love me. They like to greet me on the stairs. They like to listen and smile. But no one has ever watched under my window. No one has secretly learned what I do every hour of the day. No one has ...
She lay back on the sofa, her cheeks flushed and wet. I talked to her for a long time. I said that her genius was social, that she was made for the delight of company, that she relieved others of the weight of their own boredom, their disguised self-hatred. I promised her that she could find happiness in the exercise of her gift. I could see by a glimpse of her wet cheek turned away, that it calmed her to be told so, for she possessed the one form of genius that is almost never praised to its face. She grew more tranquil. After a pause she began talking in a dreamy tone:
I will leave him alone. I will never see him again, she began. When I was a girl and we lived on the mountains, Samuele, I had a pet goat named Tertullien that I loved very much. One day Tertullien died. I would not be comforted. I was hateful and obstinate. The nuns with whom I went to school could do nothing with me and when it was my turn to recite I refused to speak. At last my dear Mother Superior called me into her room and at first I was very bad, even with her. But when she began to tell me of her losses I flung my arms about her and wept for the first time. As a punishment she made me stop everyone I met and say to them twice: God is sufficient! God is sufficient!
After a pause she added: I know that it can be true for other people, but I still wanted Tertullien. When is your patience with me coming to an aid, Samuele?
Never, I said.
The windows were beginning to show the first light of dawn. Suddenly a little bell rang out near by, a tinkle of purest silver.
Hush, she said. That's the earliest mass at some church.
Santa Maria in Trastevere is just around the corner.
Hurry!
We let ourselves out of the palace and breathed the cold gray air. A mist seemed to hang low about the street; puffs of blue smoke lay in the corners. A cat passed us. Shivering but elated we entered the church joining two old women in wadded clothes and a laborer. The basilica loomed above, the candles of our side-chapel picking out reflections in the curious marbles and the gold of the mosaics in the vast black cave. The service of the Mass was enrolled with expedition and accuracy. When we came out a milky light had begun to fill the square. The shutters of several shops were being lowered; drowsy passers-by made the diagonals staggering; a woman was lowering her chickens in a basket from the fifth story for a long day's scratching.
We walked over to the Aventine, crossing the Tiber which twisted like a great yellow rope under a delicate fume. We stopped for a glass of sour blue-black wine and a paper bag of peaches.
For the time at least the Princess seemed to herself to have forever closed her mind to even the remotest hope that she would ever see Blair again. Sitting on a stone bench on the gloomy Aventine while the sun shouldered its way up through plunging orange clouds, we mused. She seemed for a time to have fallen back into her old despondency; I resumed the arguments that spoke more glowingly of her gifts.
Suddenly she straightened up. All right. I will try it for you. I must do something. Where are you going today?
I murmured that Mme. Agaropoulos was giving a sort of a musicale: that she was introducing a young compatriot who claimed to have discovered the secret of ancient Greek music.
Write her a note. Telephone her. Ask her if I may come. I too shall learn about ancient Greek music. I shall be introduced to everyone there. I shall be asked to everyone's house. Listen, Samuele, since you say it is my talent I shall get to know everyone in Rome. I shall die of social engagements: Here lies the woman who never refused an invitation. I shall meet two thousand people in ten days. I shall lay
myself out to please anybody on earth. And mind you, Samuele, if that does not nourish me, we shall have to finish trying, you know....
Mme. Agaropoulos was staggered with joy when she discovered that the unhoped for the unprocurable Princess was coming to her house. Mme. Agaropoulos was not the slave of social categories, but she longed to frequent the Cabala, as some long for the next world. She assumed that in that company all was wit and love and peace. There one would find no silly people, none envious, none quarrelsome. She had met the Princess d'Espoli once and had ever since taken her as the type of person she would herself have been if she had been betterlooking, thinner and had had more time to read, little realizing that all these had been more in her power than in Alix, and that she had spoiled her own progress by a lazy kindliness, great kindliness but lazy.
The Princess called for me in her car at five o'clock. It would be impossible for me to describe her clothes; it is enough to say that she had the most incredible power of supplying new angles, shades, lines, that interpreted her character. This aptitude received added éclat from her residence in Italy, for Italian women, though often more beautiful, lack both figure and judgment. They anxiously spend enormous sums in Paris and achieve nothing but bundles of rich stuffs that bulge or trail or blow about them in effects they half guess to be unsuccessful, and seek to repair with a display of stones.
We pursued the Via Po for a mile or two and alighted at the ugliest of its houses, an example of that modern German architecture that has done so much for factories. As we mounted the stairs she kept muttering: Watch me! Watch me! In the hall we found a host of latecomers standing with their fingers on their lip while from the drawing rooms there issued the sound of passionate declamation accompanied by the plucking of a lyre, the desolate moto perpetuo of an oriental flute and a rhythmic clapping of hands. In other words we had arrived too early; our campaign for meeting two thousand souls in ten days was being balked at the outset. Fretted we pushed on into the garden behind the house. Sitting down on a stone bench, with the tragic ode still faintly sounding in our ears we gave our attention to the spectacle in the middle distance of a white-haired gentleman in a wheel-chair overflowing with brightly-colored shawls. This was Jean Perraye; I told the Princess of how Mme. Agaropoulos had found the saintly old
French poet at the point of death, wrapt in shawls in a wretched little hotel at Pisa, and how by supplying him with tender interest, whole milk and a group of pet animals she had restored his muse, comforted his last years and effected his entrance into the French Academy. At this moment he was engaged in addressing a circle of attentive cats. These six cats, intermittently licking the fine silk of their shoulders, and casting polite glances at their patron, were gray angoras, the color of cigarette ash. We had read the poet's latest book and knew their names: six queens of France. We practically dozed on the bench—the hot sunlight, the choruses of the Antigone behind and Jean Perraye's exordium to the queens of France and Persia before, would have made drowsy even those who had not passed a night of confession and tears.
When we came to ourselves the audition was over and the company, doubly noisy after music, was shouting its appreciation. We re-entered the house, hungry for pastry and encounters. A sea of hats, with scores of self-conscious eyes staring about in perpetual search of new salutations, marking down the Princess for their own; occasionally the large stomach of a senator or an ambassador swathed in serge and bound with a golden chain.
Who's the lady in the black hat? whispered Alix.
Signora Daveni, the great engineer's wife.
Fancy! Will you bring her to me or should you take me to her No, I'll go to her. Take me.
Signora Daveni was a plain little woman presenting the high lifted forehead and fresh eyes of an idealistic boy. Her husband was one of Italy's foremost engineers, an inventor of many tremendous trifles in airplane construction and a bulwark of conservative methods in the rising storm of labor agitation. The Signora was on every philanthropic committee of any importance in the whole country and during the War had directed incalculable labors. The consciousness of her responsibilities combined with a touch of brusqueness from her humble extraction had brought her into many a short triumphant struggle with cabinets and senates and there are stories of her having sharply rebuked the vague, well-intentioned interferences of the royal ladies of Savoy. Yet these distinctions had only made her manners the simpler and her quick cordiality was continually deflating the deference that
was paid to her. She dressed badly; she walked badly, her large feet pushing before her like those of some jar-carrier in an upland village. It had been rather fine in uniform, but now that she must return to hats and gowns and rings the consciousness of her lack of grace caused her much depression. Her home was in Turin, but she lived a great deal in Rome out among the open lots of the Via Nomentana and knew everyone. The Princess with the unexpectedness that lies in the very definition of genius turned the conversation upon the use of sphagnum moss as a surgical dressing. The diverse excellence of the two women glimpsed one another; the Princess was astonished to find such quiet mastery in a woman without a de and the Signora was amazed to find the same quality in a noblewoman.
I drifted off, but presently the Princess rejoined me. She is real, that woman. I am going to dinner with her Friday; so are you. Find me some more. Who is that blonde with the voice?
You don't want to know her, Princess.
She must be important with that voice; who is she?
She is the woman in the whole world who is most your opposite.
Then I must know her. Will she give me tea and introduce me to a dozen people?
Oh, yes, she'll do that. But you haven't a thing in common. She is a narrow British woman, Princess. Her only interest is in the Protestant Church. She lives in a little British hotel....
But where does she get that authority—and the Princess made a gesture of perfect mimicry.
Well, I admitted, she has received the highest honors an Englishwoman can receive. She wrote a hymn and they made her a Dame of the British Empire.
You see I must be caught out of myself. I must meet her right now.
So I led her up to Dame Edith Steuert, Mrs. Edith Foster Prichard Steuert, author of Far From Thy Ways, I Strayed, the greatest hymn since Newman's. Daughter, wife, sister, what not, of clergymen, she lived in the most exciting currents of Anglicanism. Her conversation ran on vacant livings and promising young men from Shropshire, and on
the editorials in the latest St. Georges Banner and The Anglican Cry. She sat on platforms and raised subscriptions and got names. She seemed to be forever surrounded by a ballet of curates and widows who at her word, rose and swayed and passed the scones. For she was the author of the greatest hymn of modern times and gazing at her one wondered when the mood could have struck this loud conceited woman, the mood that had prompted those eight verses of despair and humility. The hymn could have been written by Cowper, that gentle soul exposed to the flame of an evangelism too hot even for negroes. For one minute in her troubled girlhood all the intermittent sincerity of generations of clergymen must have combined in her, and late at night, full of dejections she could not understand, she must have committed to her diary that heartbroken confession. Then the fit was over, and over for ever. It was a telling example of that great mystery in religious and artistic experience: the occasional profundity of nobodies. Dame Edith Steuert on being presented, straightened visibly to show that she was not impressed by the title. With a candor that was another surprise, Alix asked her if she might use her name as reference on her nephew's application for entrance into Eton College. To be sure the nephew was in Lyons, but if Dame Edith would permit the Princess to call upon her some afternoon she would bring some of the boy's letters, photographs and sufficient apparatus to convince her that he was a student recommendable. Friday afternoon was agreed upon, and the Princess rejoined me for new introductions.
So it went on for an hour. The Princess had no method; each new encounter was a new problem. Within three minutes the meeting became an acquaintance, and the acquaintance a friendship. Little did the new friends guess how strange it was to her. She kept asking me what their husbands "did." It delighted her to think that their husbands did anything; she had never guessed that one could meet such people and smiled amazedly like a girl about to meet a real printed poet. A doctor's wife, the wife of a man in rubber, fancy.... Toward the end of the afternoon her enthusiasm waned. I feel a little dusty, she whispered. I feel very Bovary. To think that all this has been going on in Rome without my knowing it. I'll go and say goodbye to Mme. Agaropoulos,—tiens, who is that beautiful lady. That is an American, isn't it? Quick.
For the only time in my life I saw the beautiful and unhappy Mrs. Darrell who had come to take leave of her Roman friends. As she entered the room a silence fell upon the company; there was something antique, something Plato would have seized upon in the effect of her beauty. She made much of it, with that touch of conceit that we allow to a great musician listening exaggeratedly to his own perfect phrasing, or to the actor who sets aside author, fellow-players and the fable itself, in order to improvise the last excessive moments of a death scene. She dressed, she glanced, she moved and spoke as only uncontested beauties may: she too revived a lost fine art. To this virtuosity of appearing, her illness and suffering had added a quality even she could not estimate, a magic of implied melancholy. But all this perfection of hers was unapproachable; none of her dearest friends, not even Miss Morrow, dared to kiss her. She was like a statue in a solitude. She presuffered her death, and her spirit was set in defiance. She hated every atom of a creation where such things were possible. The next week she was to retire to her villa at Capri with her collection of Mantegnas and Bellinis and to live through four months with their treacherous love-affair and to die. But this day in the serenity of the selfishness that was her perfection and the selfishness that was her illness she effaced the room.
He would have loved me if I had looked like that, breathed Alix into my ear, and sinking into a retired chair covered her mouth with her hand.
Mme. Agaropoulos took Helen Darrell's fingertips a little timidly and led her to the finest chair. No one seemed able to say anything. Luigi and Vittorio, sons of the house, went up and kissed her hand; the American ambassador approached to compliment her.
She is beautiful. She is beautiful, muttered Alix to herself. The world is hers. She will never have to suffer as I must. She is beautiful.
It would not have consoled the Princess if I had explained to her that Helen Darrell, having been admired extravagantly from the cradle had never been obliged to cultivate her intelligence to retain her friends and that, if I may say it respectfully, her mind was still that of a school-girl.
Fortunately the flautist was still there to play and during the performance of the Paradise music from Orpheus scarcely a pair of
eyes in the room left the newcomer's face. She sat perfectly straight, allowing herself none of the becoming attitudes which music suggests to her kind, no ardent attention, no starry-eyed revery. I remember thinking she marked too deliberately the anti-sentimental. When the music was over she asked to be taken to say goodbye, for the present, to Jean Perraye. From the window I could see them alone together, with the gray cats, queens of France, moving meaninglessly about them. One wonders what they said to one another as she knelt beside his chair: as he said later, they loved one another because they were ill.
Alix d'Espoli would not stir until she knew that Mrs. Darrell had left the house and garden. All her suffering had rushed back upon her. She pretended to be sipping a cup of tea while she gathered herself together. I understand now, she murmured hoarsely. God has never meant me to be happy. Others may be happy with one another. But I shall never be. I know that now. Let us go.
Then began what was ever after known to the Cabala as Alix aux Enfers. She would lunch at a tiny pension with some English spinsters; stop in at some studio in the Via Margutta; pass through a reception at an Embassy; dance till seven at the Hotel Russie as the guest of some cosmetic manufacturer's wife; dine with the Queen Mother; hear the last two acts of the Opera in Marconi's box. Even after that she might feel the need of finishing the day at the Russian cabaret, perhaps contributing herself a monologue to the program. She no longer had any time to see the Cabala and it watched her progress with terror. They begged her to come back to them, but she only laughed at them with her bright febrile eyes and dashed off into her new-found whirlpools. Long after when some Roman name arose in their conversation they would all cry: Alix knows them! To which she would reply coolly: Of course I know them, and a roar would arise from the table. The acquaintances she was now pursuing for distraction, I had long since pursued for study or from simple liking; but she soon outstripped me by the hundreds. I went to a few engagements with her, but often enough we would come upon one another in ludicrous situations; whereupon we would retire behind a door and compare notes as to how we got there. Did Commendatore Boni ask a few people to the Palatine? she was there. Did Benedetto Croce give a private reading of a paper on George Sand? we glimpsed one another gravely in that solemn air. She lost a comb in defence of Reality at the
stormy opening of Pirandello's Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore; at Casella's party for Mengelberg, who had been surpassing himself at the Augusteo, dear old Bossi stood on her train and the sound of ripping satin caught the enraptured ear of a dozen organists.
When the bourgeoisie discovered that she was accepting invitations there was a tumult as of many waters. Most of her hostesses assumed that she would not have come to them were it not for the fact that better doors were beginning to be closed against her, but fair or foul they would accept her. And they had her at her best; the faint touch of frenzy that was driving her on only rendered her gift the more dazzling. People who had spent their lives laughing at tiresome jokes were now given something to laugh at. She would be begged to do this or that "bit" which had become famous. Have you heard Alix do the Talking Horse? No, but she did the Kronprinz in Frascati for us last Friday. Oh, aren't you lucky!
For the first time she was seeing something of artists and among them she was enjoying her liveliest successes. The underpainting of her misery which especially these days rendered her wit so magical was much clearer to them than to the manufacturers. They never failed to mention it and their love led them to paying her the strangest tributes which at the time she was in too great a daze to stop and value.
For a while I thought she was enjoying all this. She would laugh so naturally over some of the accidents of the days. Moreover I noticed that she was forming some very rare attachments and I hoped that the friendship of Signora Daveni or of Duse or of Besnard would be able to comfort and finally reconcile her. But one evening I was suddenly shown how utterly ineffectual this plunging about the jungle was.
After a month's absence James Blair wrote me from Spain that he had to come back to Rome, even if it were only for a week. He promised to see no one, to keep up side-streets and to get out as soon as it was possible.
I wrote him back in the strongest profanity that it was impossible. Go anywhere else. Don't fool with such things.
He replied, no less angry, that he could move about the earth as freely as everybody else. Whether I liked it or not he was coming to Rome the following Wednesday and nothing would stop him. He was
on the traces of the Alchemists. He wanted to know all that was left of the old secret societies and his search was leading to Rome. Since I could do nothing to prevent his coming I could at least devote my energies to concealing it. I took almost ridiculous precautions. I even saw to it that Mlle de Morfontaine had Alix in Tivoli over the week-end and that Besnard had her sitting for a portrait most of the mornings. But there is a certain spiritual law that requires our tragic coincidences. Which of us has not felt it? Take no precautions.
The seer whom Blair had returned to visit, Sareptor Basilis, lived in three rooms on the top floor of an old palace in the Via Fontanella di Borghese. Rumor had it that he could make lightning play about his left hand and that when his meditations approached ecstacy he could be seen sitting among the broken arcs of a dozen rainbows; and that as you mounted the dark stairs you fought your way through the welcoming ghosts as through a swarm of bees. In the front room where the meetings were held (Wednesdays for adepts, Saturdays for beginners) one was awed by discovering a circular hole in the roof that was never closed. Under it had been laid a zinc-lined depression that carried off the rain water and in this depression stood the master's chair.
Long meditation and ecstatic trances had certainly beautified his face. His blue-green eyes, not incapable of sudden acuteness, drifted vaguely about under a smooth pink forehead; he had the bushy white eyebrows and beard of Blake's Creator. Except for his long walks he seemed to have no private life, but sat all day and night under the hole in the roof, lending an ear to a whispering visitor, writing slowly with his left hand, or gazing up into the sky. A host of people from every walk of life sought him out and held him in reverence. He gave no thought to practical necessities, for his admirers, spiritually prompted, were continually leaving significant looking envelopes beside him on the zinc-lined depression. Some left bottles of wine and bars of bread, and brown silk shirts. The only human occupation that arrested his attention was music, and it is said that he would stand by the door of the Augusteo on the afternoon of a symphony concert and wait for some passerby, spiritually prompted, to buy him a ticket. If none came, he would continue on his way without bitterness. He composed music himself, hymns for unaccompanied voices which he affirmed he had heard in dream. They were written in a notation resembling our own,
but not sufficiently so to allow of transcription. I have puzzled for hours over the score of a certain Lo, where the rose of dispersion empurples the dawn. This motet for ten voices, a chorus of angels on the last day, began plainly enough with the treble clef on five staves, but how was one to interpret a sudden shrinkage of the horizontal lines to two in all parts? I humbly approached the master on this subject. He replied that the effect of the music at that point could only be expressed by a radical departure from standard notation; that the economy of staves denoted an acuity of pitch; that the note on which my thumb was reposing was an E, a violet E, an E of the quality of a lately-warmed amethyst ... music powerless to express ... ah ... the rose of dispersion empurples. At first the nonsense in which he moved and thought enraged me. I invented opportunities for provoking his absurdity. I improvised a story about a pilgrim who had come up to me in the nave of the Lateran and told me it was God's will that I should return with him to a leper colony in Australia. Dear Master, I cried, how shall I know if this be my real vocation? His answer was not clear. I was told that destiny herself was the mother of decision, and that my vocation would be settled by events not by consideration. In the next breath I was bidden to do nothing rashly; to lay my ear over the lute of eternity and to plan my life in harmony with the cosmic overtones. During the course of a year thousands of women visited him, of every rank, and in every sort of perplexity, and to each one he offered the comforts of metaphor. They came away from him with shining faces; these phrases were beautiful and profound to them; they wrote them in their diaries and murmured them over to themselves when they were tired.
Basilis was attended by two homely sisters, the Adolfini girls. Lise must have been thirty and Vanna about twenty-eight. They say that he ran across them in the Italian quarter of London where they were serving as attendants in a ballet school. Penury and abuse had left them scarcely the human semblance. Every evening at eleven when they had unlaced the last slipper of the night class, treated the floor with tallow, polished the bars and tied up the chandelier, they went around the corner to the Café Roma for a thimbleful of coffee to sip with their bread. Here Basilis was to be found, a photographer's assistant with grandiose pretensions. He was vice-president of the Rosicrucian Mysteries, Soho Chapter, a group of clerks, waiters and idealistic barbers who found compensation for the humiliations they underwent
by day in the glories they ascribed to themselves by night. They met in darkened rooms, took oaths with one hand resting on the works of Swedenborg, read papers on the fabrication of gold and its metaphysical implications, and elected one another with great earnestness to the offices of arch-adept and magister hieraticorum. They corresponded with similar societies in Birmingham, Paris and Sydney, and sent sums of money to the last of the magi, OrzindaMazda of Mount Sinai. Basilis first discovered his power over the minds of women when he fell into the habit of talking to the two mute sisters in the café. They listened wide-eyed to his stories of how some workmen near Rome, breaking by chance into the tomb of Cicero's daughter, Tulliola, discovered an ever-burning lamp suspended in mid-air, its wick feeding on Perpetual Principle; of how Cleopatra's son Cæsarion was preserved in a translucent liquid "oil of gold," and could be still seen in an underground shrine at Vienna; and of how Virgil never died, but was alive still on the Island of Patmos, eating the leaves of a peculiar tree. The wonder-stories, the narrator's apocalyptic eyes, the excitement of being spoken to without anger, and the occasional offer of Vermouth bewitched the sisters. They became his unquestioning slaves; with the money they had saved up he opened a Temple where his gift met extraordinary success. The girls left the ballet school and became doorkeepers in the house of their lord. The new leisure into which they entered, the sufficient food, the privilege of serving Basilis, his confidence and his love, combined to constitute a burden of happiness almost too great to be borne. Happiness is in proportion to humility: the humility of the Adolfini girls was so profound that there was in it no room for the expression of gratitude or surprise; in the face of it food could not fatten them nor love soften their bony features; not even when after some altercation with the London police Basilis and his handmaidens removed to their native Rome. To be sure the master in turn never confessed his indebtedness to the girls for their silent and skillful ministration. Even in love he was impersonal; they merely provided him with that mood of gentle satiety of the senses which is an indispensable element of the philosopher's meditation.
It was under this skylight then that Blair and I sat at about eleventhirty, waiting for the public séance to begin. We were early, and leaning back against the wall we watched the little group of visitors that one by one moved up to the unboxed confessional that was the master's ear. A
clerk with watery eyes and trembling hands; a stout lady of the middle class, gripping a large shopping purse and talking with great rapidity about her nepote; a trim little professional woman, probably a lady's maid, stuffing a tiny handkerchief into her mouth as she sobbed. Basilis' eyes seldom strayed to his visitors' faces, while he dismissed them with a few measured grave sentences his glance revealed nothing but its serene abstraction. Presently a younger woman, heavily veiled, crossed the floor swiftly to the empty chair beside him. She must have been there before, for she lost no time in greetings. Under deep emotion she pleaded with him. A little surprised by her vehemence he interrupted her several times with the words Mia figlia. The reproaches only increased her energy, and brushing back her veil with her hand in order to thrust her face into the sage's she revealed herself as Alix d'Espoli. Terror went through me; I seized Blair's arm and made signs that we were to escape. But at that moment the Princess with a gesture of anger, as though she had come, not so much to ask the sage's counsel, as to announce a determination, rose and turned to the door. Unerringly her eyes met ours, and the rebellious light died out, to be replaced by fear. For a moment the three of us hung suspended on one cord of horror. Then the Princess collected herself long enough to tincture the despairing contraction of her mouth with a smile; she bowed to us deliberately in turn and passed almost majestically from the room.
At once I returned home and wrote her a long letter, using the whole truth as a surgeon in an extremity would resort to a wholesale guesswork with the knife. I never received an answer. And our friendship was over. I had often to meet her again, and we even came finally to have agreeable conversations together, but we never mentioned the affair and there was a glaze of impersonality over her eyes.
From the night she had seen us in Basilis' rooms the Princess gave up her social researches as abruptly as she had begun them. Nor did she ever go to the Rosicrucian again. I heard that she was attempting the few remaining consolations that lie open to affliction: she took to the fine arts; she climbed up ladders respectfully placed for her in the Sistine Chapel and stared at the frescos through magnifying glasses; she resumed the culture of her voice and even sang a little in public. She started off on a trip to Greece, but came back without any
explanations a week later. There was a hospital phase during which she cut off her hair and tiptoed about among the wards.
At last the beating of the wings, the darting about the cage, subsided. She had come to the second stage of convalescence: the mental pain that had been so great that it had to be passed into the physical and that expressed itself in movement, had now sufficiently abated to permit her to think. All her vivacity left her and she sat about in her friends' homes listening to their visitors.
Little by little then her old graces began to reappear. First a few wry sarcasms, gently slipping off her tongue; then some rueful narratives in which she appeared in a poor light; then ever so gradually the wit, the energy, and last of all the humor.
The whole Cabala trembled with joy, but pretended to have noticed nothing. Only one night when for the first time at table she had returned to her gorgeous habit of teasing the Cardinal on his Chinese habits, only once on leaving the table did he take her two hands and gaze deep into her eyes with a significant smile that both reproached her for her long absence and welcomed her back. She blushed slightly and kissed the sapphire.
I, who know nothing about such things, assumed that the grand passion was over and dreaded any moment seeing her interesting herself in some new Northerner But one little incident taught me how deep a wound may be.
One afternoon at the villa in Tivoli we were standing on the balcony overlooking the falls. Whenever she was left alone with me her charm abated; she seemed to be fearing that I might attempt a confidence; the muscles at the corners of her mouth would tighten. We were joined from the house by a well-known Danish archaeologist who began to discourse upon the waterfall and its classical associations. Suddenly he stopped and turning to me, cried:
Oh, I have a message for you. How could I have forgotten that! I met a friend of yours in Paris. A young American named Blair—let me see, was it Blair?
Yes, Doctor.
