es so insignificant and so quickly
over, and behind them the fine stuff of the human and divine soul,
pushing on through all raillery and incongruity to its goal. Why, I had
caught up, once more, that interest in life that I had, I thought, so
utterly lost! I stopped for a moment by the frozen canal and laughed to
myself. The drama of life was, after all, too strong for my weak
indifference. I felt that night as though I had stepped into a new house
with lighted rooms and fires and friends waiting for me. Afterwards, I
was so closely stirred by the sense of impending events that I could not
sleep, but sat at my window watching the faint lights of the sky shift
and waver over the frozen ice....

X

We were approaching Christmas. The weather of these weeks was
wonderfully beautiful, sharply cold, the sky pale bird's-egg blue, the
ice and the snow glittering, shining with a thousand colours. There
began now a strange relationship between Markovitch and myself.

There was something ineffectual and pessimistic about me that made
Russians often feel in me a kindred soul. At the Front, Russians had
confided in me again and again, but that was not astonishing, because
they confided in every one. Nevertheless, they felt that I was less
English than the rest, and rather blamed me in their minds, I think, for
being so. I don't know what it was that suddenly decided Markovitch to
"make me part of his life." I certainly did not on my side make any
advances.

One evening he came to see me and stayed for hours. Then he came two or
three times within the following fortnight. He gave me the effect of not
caring in the least whether I were there or no, whether I replied or
remained silent, whether I asked questions or simply pursued my own
work. And I, on my side, had soon in my consciousness his odd,
irascible, nervous, pleading, shy and boastful figure painted
permanently, so that his actual physical presence seemed to be
unimportant. There he was, as he liked to stand up against the white
stove in my draughty room, his rather dirty nervous hands waving in
front of me, his thin hair on end, his ragged beard giving his eyes an
added expression of anxiety. His body was a poor affair, his legs thin
and uncertain, an incipient stomach causing his waistcoat suddenly to
fall inwards somewhere half-way up his chest, his feet in ill-shapen
boots, and his neck absurdly small inside his high stiff collar. His
stiff collar jutting sharpl