"Gone?" I repeated stupidly after him.
"Yes—that's not death—to go like that. She must be somewhere still—somewhere in this beastly forest. What—afterwards—when you saw her—what? ... her face?..."
"She looked very peaceful—quite happy."
"No restlessness in her face? No anxiety?"
"None."
"But all that life—that energy. It can't have stopped. Quite suddenly. It can't. She can't have wanted not to know all those things that she was so eager about before." He was suddenly voluble, excited, leaning forward, staring at me. "You know how she was. You must have seen it numbers of times—how she never looked at any of us really, how we were none of us—no, not even Semyonov—anything to her really; always staring past us, wanting to know the answer to questions that we couldn't solve for her. She wouldn't give it all up simply for nothing, simply for a bullet ..." he broke off.
"Look here, Trenchard," I said, "try not to think of her just now more than you can help, just now. We're in for a stiff time, I believe. This will be our last easy afternoon, 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."