ushed straight
back, too high. Her complexion was pale and when she was confused,
excited, or pleased, the colour came into her face in a faint flush
that ebbed and flowed but never reached its full glow. Her hands were
thin and pale. It was her eyes that made her so young; they were so
large and round and credulous, scornful sometimes with the scorn of
the very young for all the things in the world that they have not
experienced--but young especially in all their urgent capacity for
life, in their confidence of carrying through all the demands that
the High Gods might make upon them. I knew as I looked at her that at
present her eagerness for experience was stronger, by far, than her
eagerness for any single human being. I wondered whether Trenchard
knew that. He was, beyond discussion, most desperately in love; the
love of a shy man who has for so many years wondered and dreamed and
finds, when the reality comes to him, that it is more, far more, than
he had expected. When she came in to us he sat very quietly by her
side and talked, if he talked at all, to the other Sister, a stout
comfortable woman with no illusions, no expectations, immense capacity
and an intensely serious attitude to food and drink.

Trenchard let his eyes rest upon his lady's face whenever she was
unaware, but I could see that he was desperately anxious not to offend
her. His attitude to all women, even to Anna Petrovna, the motherly
Sister, was that of a man who has always blundered in their company,
who has been mocked, perhaps, for his mistakes. I could see, however,
that his pride in his new possession, his pride and his happiness,
carried with it an absolute assurance of his security. He had no
doubts at all. He seemed, in this, even younger than she.

Through all that long Spring day we wandered on--wandering it seemed
as the train picked its way through the fields under a sky of blue
thin and fine like glass; through a world so quiet and still that
birds and children sang and called as though to reassure themselves
that they were not alone. Nothing of the war in all this. At the
stations there were officers eating "Ztchee" soup and veal and
drinking glasses of weak tea, there were endless mountains of hot meat
pies; the ikons in the restaurants looked down with benignancy and
indifference upon the food and the soldiers and beyond the station the
light green trees blowing in the little wind; the choruses of the
soldiers came from their t