She made no reply to him. She had not, I believe, heard him. She said, as though she were speaking to herself: “If we had not come, John, if we had stayed in Petrograd, anything might have been. But here there is something more than people. I don’t know whether I love or hate anyone. I cannot marry you or any man until this is all over.”
“And then,” he interrupted passionately, touching her sleeve with his hand. “After the war? Perhaps—again, you will—”
She took his hand in hers, looking at him as though she were suddenly seeing him for the first time:
“No—you, John, never. In Petrograd I didn’t know what this could be—no idea—none. And now that I’m here I can think of nothing else than what I’m going to find. There is something here that I’d be afraid of if I let myself be and that’s what I love. What will happen when I meet it? Shall I feel fear or no? And so, too, if there were a man whom I feared. …”
“Semyonov!” Trenchard cried.
She looked at him and did not answer. He caught her hand urgently. “No, Marie, no—anyone but Semyonov. It doesn’t matter about me. But you must be happy—you must be. Nothing else—and he won’t make you. He isn’t—”
“Happy!” she answered scornfully. “I don’t want to be happy. That isn’t it. But to be sure that one’s not afraid—” (She repeated to herself several times hrabrost—the Russian for “bravery.”) “That is more than you, John, or than I or than—”
She broke off, looked at him suddenly as he told me “very tenderly and kindly as though she liked me.”
“John, I’m your friend. I’ve been bad to you, but I’m your friend. I don’t understand why I’ve been so bad to you because, I would be fur-rious—yes, fur-rious—if anyone else were bad to you. And be mine, John, whatever I do, be mine. I’m not really a bad character—only I think it’s too exciting now, here—everything—for me to stop and think.”
“You know,” he answered with a rather tired gesture (he had worked in that hot theatre all the morning) “that I am always the same—but you must not marry Semyonov,” he added fiercely.
She did not answer him, looked up at the sunlight and said after a time:
“I hate Sister K⸺. She is not really religious. She doesn’t wash either. Let us go back. I was away, I said, only for a little.”
They walked back, he told me, in perfect silence. He was more unhappy than ever. He was more unhappy because he saw quite clearly that he did not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than ever and loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things. If he had taken that sentence of hers—“I think it’s too exciting—now—here—for me to stop and think,” he would, I fancy, have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was so simple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatest discomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for a moment. His diary for these four days is very short and unromantic.
“June 23rd. In X⸺. Morning worked in the theatre. Bandaged thirty. Operation 1—arm amputated. Learn that there has been a battle round the schoolhouse at O⸺ where we first were. Wonderful weather. Spent some time in the park. Talked to M. there. Evening moved—thirty versts to P⸺. Much dust, very slow, owing to the Guards retreating at same time. Was with Durward and Andrey Vassilievitch in a podvoda—Like the latter, but he’s out of place here. Arrived 1:30.
“June 24th. Off early morning. This time black carriage with Sisters K⸺ and Anna Petrovna. More dust—thousands of soldiers passing us, singing as though there were no retreat. News from L⸺ very bad. Say there’s no ammunition. Arrived Nijnieff evening 7:30. Very hungry and thirsty. We could find no house for some hours; a charming little town in a valley. Nestor seems huge—very beautiful with wooded hills. But whole place so swallowed in dust impossible to see anything. Heaps of wounded again. I and Molozov in nice room alone. Have not seen M. all day.
“June 25th. This morning Nikitin, Sister K⸺, Goga, and I attempted to get back to P⸺ to see whether there were wounded. Started off on the carts but when we got to the hill above the village met the whole of our Division coming out. The village abandoned, so back we had to go again through all the dust. Evening nothing doing. Everyone depressed.
“June 26th. Very early—half-past five in the morning—we were roused and had to take part in an exodus like the Israelites. Most unpleasant, moving an inch an hour, Cossacks riding one down if one preferred to go on foot to being bumped in the haycart. Everyone in the depths of depression. Crossed the Nestor, a perfectly magnificent river. Five versts further, then stopped at a farmhouse, pitched tents. Instantly hundreds of wounded. Battle fierce just other side of Nijnieff. Worked like a nigger—from two to eight never stopped bandaging. About ten went off to the position with Molozov. Strange to be back in the little town under such different circumstances. Dark as pitch—raining. Much noise, motors, soldiers like ghosts though—shrapnel all the time. Tired, depressed and nervous. Horrid waiting doing nothing; two houses under the shrapnel. Expected also at every
