The young woman lifted her head. Tantalizing dreams of choice foods had yielded to equally enticing thoughts of suicide, which now seemed almost a friend and a mercy. Finally, she uttered a prayer: “God, if you save me from this, in some sort of way, I will offer my life to you.” Then she collapsed, unconscious on the cottage floor, very nearly another victim of the Bolsheviks’ annihilation of the Russian nobility.