"And so I'm not surprised, Durward, that you thought me a terrible fool to show my feelings as I've done this last fortnight. But you don't know what it is to me—to have something at last in your hands that you've dreamed of all your life and never dared to hope for: to have it and feel that at any moment it may slip away and leave you in a worse state than you were before. I'd been wishing, these last weeks, that I'd never met her, that I'd simply come to the war by myself. But now—to-day—when she spoke to me as she did, asked me to forgive her for what happened last night, my God, Durward! I to forgive her!... But I'll show her this very night what I can do—this very night! They'll give me a chance, won't they? It would be terrible if they didn't. Semyonov won't give me a chance if he can help it. What have I done to Semyonov that he should hate me? What have...."
But I didn't answer Trenchard. That part of me that had any concern with him and his affairs was far away. But his voice had stirred some more active life in me. I thought to myself now: Will there be some concrete definite moment in this affair when I shall say to myself: "Ah, there it is! There's the heart of this whole business! There's the enemy! Slay him and you have settled the matter!" or, perhaps, "Ah, now I've seen the secret. Now I've hunted the animal to his lair. This is war, this thing here. Now all my days I remain quiet. There is nothing more to fear"—or would it be perhaps that I should face something and be filled, then, with ungovernable terror so that I should run for my life, run, hide me in the hills, cover up my days so that no one shall ever find me again?...
I raised myself on my elbow and looked at the country. We jolted over a little brook, brushed through a thicket of trees, came on to a path running at the forest's foot, and saw on our left a little wooden house, a high wood fire burning in front of it. I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock. Already a very faint glow throbbed in the sky. Out of the forest, at long intervals, came a dull booming sound like the shutting of a heavy iron door.
The wagons drew up. We had arrived at our destination.
"We shall be here," I heard Semyonov say, "some five hours or so. You'd better sleep if you can."
A group of soldiers round the wood fire were motionless, their faces glowing, their bodies dark. Our wagons, drawn up together, resembled in the twilight strange beasts; the two Sisters lay down on one wagon, Semyonov, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and I on another. My irritated mood had returned. I had been the last to climb on to the straw and the others had so settled themselves that I had no room to lie flat. Semyonov's big body occupied half the wagon, Andrey Vassilievitch's boots touched my head and at intervals his whole body gave nervous jerks. It was also quite bitterly cold, which was curious enough after the warmth of the earlier nights. And always, at what seemed to be regular intervals, there came, from the forest, the banging of the iron door.
I felt a passionate irritation against Andrey Vassilievitch. Why could he not keep quiet? What, after all, was he doing here? I could hear that he was dreaming. He muttered some woman's name:
"Sasha ... Sasha ... Sasha...."
"Can't you keep still?" I whispered to him, but in the cold I myself was trembling. The dawn came at last with reluctance, flushing the air with colour, then withdrawing into cold grey clouds, then stealing out once more behind the forest in scattered strips of pale green gold, then suddenly sending up into the heaven a flock of pink clouds like a flight of birds, that spread in extending lines to the horizon, covering at last a sky now faintly blue, with rosy bars. The flame of the soldiers' fire grew faint, white mists rose in the fields, the cannon in the forest ceased and the birds began.
I sat up on the cart, looked at my sleeping companions, and thought how unpleasant they looked. Semyonov like a dead man, Andrey Vassilievitch like a happy pig, Trenchard like a child who slept after a scolding. I felt intense loneliness. I wanted some one to comfort me, to reassure me against life which seemed to me suddenly now perilous and remorseless; moreover some one seemed to be reviewing my life for me and displaying it to me, laying bare all its uselessness and insignificance.