sent instead of Semyonov. Nikitin was much more sympathetic.

"You seem very fond of Nikitin," I said.

"We are friends ... we have been friends for many years. My wife was
very fond of him. I am a lonely man, Ivan Andreievitch, since the
death of my wife, and to be with any one who knew her is a great
happiness ... yes, a great happiness."

"And Semyonov?" I asked.

"I have nothing to say against Alexei Petrovitch," he answered
stiffly.

When later I joined the others at the cottage higher up the road taken
by the doctors of the Division, I discovered Trenchard in an ecstasy
of happiness. He did not speak to me but his shining eyes, the
eagerness with which standing back from the group he watched us all,
told me everything. Marie Ivanovna had been kind to him, and when I
found her in the centre of them, her whole body alert with excitement,
I forgot my anger at her earlier unkindness or, if I remembered it,
laid it to the charge of my own imagination or Trenchard's
sensitiveness.

Indeed we were all excited. How could we fail to be! There was some
big business toward, and in it we were to have our share. We were,
perhaps this very day, to penetrate into the reality of the thing that
for nine months now we had been watching. All of us, with our little
private histories like bundles on our backs, are venturing out to try
our fortune.... What are we going to find?

I remember indeed that early on that afternoon I felt the drama of the
whole affair so heavily that I saw in every soldier who passed me a
messenger of fate. They called me to a meal. Eat! Now! How absurd it
seemed! Semyonov watched me cynically:

"Eat and then sleep," he said, "or you'll be no use to any one."

Afterwards I went back to the kitchen and slept. That sleep was the
end of my melodrama. I was awakened by a rough hand on my shoulder to
find it dark beyond the windows and Semyonov watching me impatiently:

"Come, get up! It's time for us to start," and then moved out. I was
conscious that I was cold and irritable. I looked back with surprised
contempt to my earlier dramatic emotions. I was hungry; I put on my
overcoat, shivered, came out into the evening, saw the line of wagons
silhouetted against the sky, listened to the perfect quiet on every
side of me, yawned and was vexed to find Trenchard at my side.

"Why this is actually dull!" I thought to myself. "It is as though I
were going to some dinner that I know beforehand will be excee