"I can't.... It's nothing ... nothing to do with me.... It's awful all day—and now this!"
I thought of Marie Ivanovna early in the morning. I looked down the road and saw that the wagons were slowly moving into the distant shadows.
"You must come," I repeated. "We can't leave you here. Don't think of yourself. And nothing can touch you—nothing, I tell you."
"I'll go back, I must. I can't go on."
"Go back? How can you? Where to? You can't go back to the trench. We shan't know where to find you." A furious anger seized me; I caught his arm. "I'll leave you, if you like. There are other things more important."
I move away from him. He looked down the long road, looked back.
"Oh, I can't ... I can't," he repeated.
"What did you come for?" I whispered furiously. "What did you think war was?... Well, good-bye, do as you please!"
As I drew away I saw a look of desperate determination in his eyes. He looked at me like a dog who expects to be beaten. Then what must have been one of the supreme moments of his life came to him. I saw him struggle to command, with the effort of his whole soul, his terror. For a moment he wavered. He made a hopeless gesture with his hand, took two little steps as though he would run into the hedge amongst the soldiers and hide there, then suddenly walked past me, quickly, towards the wagons, with his own absurd little strut, with his head up, giving his cough, looking, after that, neither to the right, nor to the left.
In silence we caught up the wagons. Soon, at some cross-roads, they came to a pause. The guide was waiting for me. "It would be better, your Honour," he whispered, "for the wagons to stay here. We shall go now simply with the stretchers...."