"You can't—you mustn't," he whispered, staring as though he would hold her by her eyes. "Don't you see that you mustn't? What am I to do after all this? What are we both to do? It's breaking everything. I shan't believe in anything if you.... Ah! but no, you don't really mean anything...."
He saw that she was trembling and he bent forward, put his arm very gently round her as though he would protect her.
But she very strongly drew away from him, looked him in the face, then dropped her eyes, let her whole body droop as though she were most bitterly ashamed.
"I don't know," she said, "what I've been ... what I've done. During these last weeks I've been terrible to myself—and yet it's better too. I didn't live a real life before, and now I see things as they are. I don't love you, John, and so we mustn't marry."
He looked at her and then suddenly wild, furious, shouting at her:
"You mustn't.... You dare not.... Then go if you wish. I don't want you, do you hear?... I don't want.... I don't want you!"
She turned and walked swiftly into the house. He watched her go, then with quick stumbling steps hurried into the field below the farm.
There he stood, thinking of nothing, knowing nothing, seeing nothing. The dusk came up, there had been rain during the day, the mist was in grey sheets, the wet dank smell of the earth and of the vegetables amongst which he stood grew stronger as the light faded. He thought of nothing, nothing at all. He felt in his pocket for his pipe, something dropped—and he knelt down there on the soaking ground, searching. He searched furiously, raging to himself again and again: "Oh! I must find it! I must find it! I must find it!" His hands tore the wet vegetables, were thick with the soil. Other things fell from his pockets, Then the rain began to descend again, thin and cold. In some building he could hear a horse moving, stamping. He pulled up the vegetables by their roots in his search. As though a sword had struck him his brain was clear. He knew of his loss. He flung himself on the ground, rubbing the wet soil on to his face, whispering desperately: "Oh God!—Oh God!—Oh God!"
On the day following we did not know of what had happened. Trenchard was not with us, as he was sent about midday with some sanitars to bury the dead in a wood five miles from M——. That must have been, in many ways, the most terrible day of his life and during it, for the first time, he was to know that unreality that comes to every one, sooner or later, at the war. It is an unreality that is the more terrible because it selects from reality details that cannot be denied, selects them without transformation, saying to his victim: "These things are as you have always seen them, therefore this world is as you have always seen it. It is real, I tell you." Let that false reality be admitted and there is no more peace.
On this day there were the two sanitars, whose faces now he knew, walking solidly beside his cart, there were the little orchards with the soldiers' tents sheltering beneath them, the villages with the old men, the women, the children, watching, like ghosts, their passage, the fields in which the summer corn was ripening, the first trembling heat and beauty of a quiet day in early June. No sound in the world but peace, the woods opening around them as they advanced. He lay back on his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeing pictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, long ago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, in which dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit of reminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of his relationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that that relationship was finally, hopelessly closed. His was not a character that was the stronger for misfortune. He submitted, crushed to the ground. His mind now dwelt upon that journey from Petrograd, a journey of incredible, ironic ecstasy lighted with the fires of the wonderful spring that had accompanied it. He recalled every detail of his conversation with me. His confidence that life would now be fine for him—how could life ever be fine for a man who let the prizes, the treasures, slip from his fingers, without an attempt to clutch them? It was so now that he saw the whole of the affair—blame of Marie Ivanovna there was none, only of his own weakness, his imbecile, idiotic weakness. In that last conversation with her why could he not have said that he refused to let her go, held to her, dominated her, as a strong man would have done? No, without a word, except a cry of impotent childish rage, he had submitted.... So, all his life it had been—so, all his life it would be.