Laughing Torso

PEACE

as I could. The Russian ballet was in London still.
They were at the Coliseum. One evening I was
walking up Whitehall after my class; the only
person in sight was a short man in a khaki uniform.
On his head he had a gold band to which was
attached a sort of white curtain. He stared at me
in rather an embarrassed way. I could not imagine
who or what he was. I turned round and saw that
he turned up Downing Street. I thought that I
would go to the gallery of the Coliseum and see the
ballet. When I got there, to my great surprise, in
a box was the little man in khaki, surrounded by
Arab chiefs. The little man was Colonel Lawrence
of Arabia. The ballet was very good indeed. They
played the " Good Humoured Ladies/5 which was
more French than Russian, but the decor and
Massine's choreography were very fine; although
the dancing was good, very good in some places,
none of it was up to the standard of the dancers
before the War in Russia and Covent Garden.

I had met, a few months previously, a very nice
man, who had been a prisoner of war in Germany.
He painted pictures and spoke quite perfect French.
He took me out quite often and was very kind to me.
I often wondered why he ever had taken to painting.
It was not because his painting was bad, it was very
competent, but he seemed to have missed his voca-
tion so completely. He was the most perfect type
of soldier I have ever met and was quite obviously
cut out to be a General instead of a painter*

The term at the Art School ended.

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