ked like a
happy boy of ten. Happiest and proudest of them all was Markovitch. He
stood there, a large pair of scissors in his hand, waiting to cut the
string round the parcels. We said again and again, "Marvellous!"
"Wonderful!" "Splendid!"... "But this year--however did you find it,
Vera Michailovna?" "To take such trouble!..." "Splendid! Splendid!" Then
we were given our presents. Vera, it was obvious had chosen them, for
there was taste and discrimination in the choice of every one. Mine was
a little old religious figure in beaten silver--Lawrence had a silver
snuff-box.... Every one was delighted. We clapped our hands. We shouted.
Some one cried "Cheers for our host and hostess!"

We gave them, and in no half measure. We shouted. Boris Grogoff cried,
"More cheers!"

It was then that I saw Markovitch's face that had been puckered with
pleasure like the face of a delighted child suddenly stiffen, his hand
moved forward, then dropped. I turned and found, standing in the
doorway, quietly watching us, Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov.

XIII

I stared at him. I could not take my eyes away. I instantly forgot every
one else, the room, the tree, the lights.... With a force, with a
poignancy and pathos and brutality that were more cruel than I could
have believed possible that other world came back to me. Ah! I could see
now that all these months I had been running away from this very thing,
seeking to pretend that it did not exist, that it had never existed. All
in vain--utterly in vain. I saw Semyonov as I had just seen him, sitting
on his horse outside the shining white house at O----. Then Semyonov
operating in a stinking room, under a red light, his arms bathed in
blood; then Semyonov and Trenchard; then Semyonov speaking to Marie
Ivanovna, her eyes searching his face; then that day when I woke from my
dream in the orchard to find his eyes staring at me through the bright
green trees, and afterwards when we went in to look at her dead; then
worst of all that ride back to the "Stab" with my hand on his thick,
throbbing arm.... Semyonov in the Forest, working, sneering, hating us,
despising us, carrying his tragedy in his eyes and defying us to care;
Semyonov that last time of all, vanishing into the darkness with his
"Nothing!" that lingering echo of a defiant desperate soul that had
stayed with me, against my bidding, ever since I had heard it.

What a fool had I been to know these people! I had felt from the first