"And you'll stay?"
"And I'll stay."
No one else said anything. I remember that I had some half-intention of protesting, of begging to be allowed to remain. But I was no match for Semyonov. I could fancy the futility of my saying: "But really, Alexei Petrovitch, we don't want you here. It's much better to leave me. You'll upset them all. It's a nervous place, this." I said nothing, except: "All right. I'll go." He watched me. He watched us all. I fancy that he smiled.
Outside I had a desperate absurd thought that I would return and ask him to be kind to Trenchard. As I turned away some one seemed to whisper in my ear:
"He's come, you know, to find Marie Ivanovna."
CHAPTER IV
FOUR?
Before I give the extracts from Trenchard's diary that follow I would like to say that I do not believe that Trenchard had any thought whatever, as he wrote, of publication. He says quite clearly that he wrote simply for his own satisfaction and later interest. At the same time I am convinced that he would not now object to their publication. If he had been here he would, I know, have supported my intention. The diary lies before me, here on my table, written in two yellow, stiff-covered manuscript books without lines. They are written very unevenly and untidily, with very few erasures, but at times incoherently and with gaps. In one place he has cut from the newspaper Rupert Brooke's sonnet, beginning: