"You know," he answered with a rather tired gesture (he had worked in that hot theatre all the morning) "that I am always the same—but you must not marry Semyonov," he added fiercely.
She did not answer him, looked up at the sunlight and said after a time:
"I hate Sister K——. She is not really religious. She doesn't wash either. Let us go back. I was away, I said, only for a little."
They walked back, he told me, in perfect silence. He was more unhappy than ever. He was more unhappy because he saw quite clearly that he did not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than ever and loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things. If he had taken that sentence of hers—"I think it's too exciting—now—here—for me to stop and think," he would, I fancy, have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was so simple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatest discomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for a moment. His diary for these four days is very short and unromantic.
"June 23rd. In X——. Morning worked in the theatre. Bandaged thirty. Operation 1—arm amputated. Learn that there has been a battle round the school-house at O—— where we first were. Wonderful weather. Spent some time in the park. Talked to M. there. Evening moved—thirty versts to P——. Much dust, very slow, owing to the Guards retreating at same time. Was with Durward and Andrey Vassilievitch in a Podvoda—Like the latter, but he's out of place here. Arrived 1.30.
"June 24th. Off early morning. This time black carriage with Sisters K—— and Anna Petrovna. More dust—thousands of soldiers passing us, singing as though there were no retreat. News from L—— very bad. Say there's no ammunition. Arrived Nijnieff evening 7.30. Very hungry and thirsty. We could find no house for some hours; a charming little town in a valley. Nestor seems huge—very beautiful with wooded hills. But whole place so swallowed in dust impossible to see anything. Heaps of wounded again. I and Molozov in nice room alone. Have not seen M. all day.
"June 25th. This morning Nikitin, Sister K——, Goga, and I attempted to get back to P—— to see whether there were wounded. Started off on the carts but when we got to the hill above the village met the whole of our Division coming out. The village abandoned, so back we had to go again through all the dust. Evening nothing doing. Every one depressed.
"June 26th. Very early—half-past five in the morning—we were roused and had to take part in an exodus like the Israelites. Most unpleasant, moving an inch an hour, Cossacks riding one down if one preferred to go on foot to being bumped in the haycart. Every one in the depths of depression. Crossed the Nestor, a perfectly magnificent river. Five versts further, then stopped at a farmhouse, pitched tents. Instantly hundreds of wounded. Battle fierce just other side of Nijnieff. Worked like a nigger—from two to eight never stopped bandaging. About ten went off to the position with Molozov. Strange to be back in the little town under such different circumstances. Dark as pitch—raining. Much noise, motors, soldiers like ghosts though—shrapnel all the time. Tired, depressed and nervous. Horrid waiting doing nothing; two houses under the shrapnel. Expected also at every moment bridge behind us to be blown up. At last wagons filled with wounded, started back and got home eventually, taking two hours over it. Very glad when it was over...."
We had arrived, indeed, although we did not then know it and were expecting, every moment, to move back again, at the conclusion of our first exodus. Our only other transition, after a day or two longer at our farmhouse, was forward four versts to a tiny village on a high hill overlooking the Nestor, to the left of Nijnieff. This village was called Mittövo. Mittövo was to be our world for many weeks to come. We inhabited once again the large white deserted country-house with the tangled garden, the dusty bare floors, the broken windows. At the end of the tangled garden there was a white stone cross, and here was a most wonderful view, the high hill running precipitously down to the flat silver expanse of the Nestor that ran like a gleaming girdle under the breasts of the slopes beyond. These further slopes were clothed with wood. I remember, on the first day that I watched, the forest beyond was black and dense like a cloud resting on the hill; the Nestor and our own country was soaked with sun.
"That's a fine forest," I said to my companion.