rnoon, I fancy, and even now we ought
to be back helping Nikitin. You've got to work all you know. One's
nerves get wrong easily enough in a place like this--and after what
has happened I feel this damned Forest already. But we mustn't _let_
our nerves go. We've simply got to work and think about nothing at
all--_think about nothing at all_."

I don't believe that he heard me.

"Semyonov?" he said slowly. "What did he do?"

"He was very quiet," I answered. "He didn't say anything. He looked
awful."

"Yes. She snapped her fingers at _him_ anyway. _He_ couldn't keep her
for all his bullying."

"It pretty well killed him," I said rather fiercely. "Look here,
Trenchard. Don't think of yourself--or of her. Every one's in it now.
There isn't any personality about it. We've simply got to do our best
and not think about it. It's thinking that beats one if one lets it."

"Semyonov ... Semyonov," he repeated to himself, smiling. "No, _he_
had not power over her." Then looking at me very calmly, he remarked:
"This Death, you know, Durward.... It simply doesn't exist. It can't
stop _her_. It can't stop _any one_ if they're determined. I'll find
her before Semyonov does, too."

Then, as though he had waked from sleep, he said to me, his voice
trembling a little: "Am I talking queerly, Durward? If I am, don't
think anything of it. It's this heat--and this place. Let's get back."
He only spoke once more. He said: "Do you remember that first
drive--ages ago, when we saw the trenches and heard the frogs and I
thought there was some one there?"

"Yes," I said. "I remember."

"Well, it's rather like that now, isn't it?"

A pretty girl, twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, obviously the
daughter of the red-faced proprietor, came up to us and asked us if we
would like any more tea. She would be stout later on, her red cheeks
were plump and her black hair arranged coquettishly in little shining
curls. She smiled on us.

"No more tea?" she said.

"No more," I answered.

"You will not be staying here?"

"Not to-night."

"We have a nice room here."

"No, thank you."

"Perhaps one of you--"

"No. We are returning to-night,"

"Perhaps, for an hour or two." Then smiling at me and laughing a
little, "I have known many officers ... very many."

"No, thank you," I said sternly.

"I have a sister," she said. She turned, crying: "Marie, Marie!"

A little girl, who could not have been more than fourteen years of
age,