BORN IN 1885, she was the younger daughter of an eminent St. Petersburg barrister. She studied at the Conservatoire there in order to become a concert pianist. Recently divorced, in 1915 she heard P.D. Ouspensky speak at the Theosophical Society (Ouspensky had joined the Society in 1907 but left after meeting Gurdjieff). Later in 1917, having been replaced in Ouspensky's affections by Sophie Grigorievna, she married the Englishman Charles Hewitt. She and her husband left Russia during the Revolution. In Paris she opened a fashionable dress salon and later became an antiques dealer there and later in London. In 1978 she published With Gurdjieff in St. Petersburg and Paris. Recounting her meetings with Ouspensky, she said: "When, in later years, we were to meet again in Berlin, in Paris and London, he had developed a hard outer shell, and I wondered then why he had crushed the gentle, poetic radiance of his St. Petersburg days. Possibly he thought of this side of himself as a weakness, yet it was in this happy mood that his inspiration and vision were strongest: the intellect had nothing to do with it."