dingly
tiresome--only then I should get some food."

I was disappointed at the lack of drama in the affair. I looked at my
watch--it was ten o'clock. Semyonov was arranging everything with a
masterly disregard of personal feelings. He swore fine Russian oaths,
abused the sanitars, always in his cold rather satirical voice, his
heavy figure moving up and down the road with a practical vivid
alertness that stirred my envy and also my annoyance. I felt utterly
useless. He ordered me on to my wagon in a manner that, in my present
half-sleepy, half-surly mood seemed to me abominably abrupt. Trenchard
climbed up, very clumsily, after me.

I leaned back on the straw, let my arms fall and lay there, flat on my
back, staring straight into the sky.... With that my mood suddenly
changed. I was at peace with the whole world. To-night was again thick
with a heavy burden of stars that seemed to weigh like the silver lid
of some mighty box heavily down, down upon us, until trees and hills
and the dim Carpathians were bent flat beneath the pressure. I lying
upon my back, seeing only that sheet of stars, in my nostrils the
smell of the straw, rocked by the slow dreamy motion of the wagon, was
filled with an exquisite ease and lethargy. I was going into battle,
was I? I was to have to-night the supreme experience of my life? It
might be that to-night I should die--only last week two members of the
Red Cross--a nurse and a doctor--had been killed. It might be that
these stars, this straw, this quiet night were round me for the last
time. It did not matter to me--nothing could touch me. My soul was
somewhere far away, upon some business of its own, and how happy was
my body without the soul, how contented, how undisturbed! I could
fancy that I should go, thus rocking, into battle and there die before
my soul had time to return to me. What would my soul do then? Find
some other body, or go wandering, searching for me? A star, a flash of
light like a cry of happiness or of glad surprise, fell through heaven
and the other stars trembled at the sight.

My wagon stopped with a jerk. Some voice asked: what the devil were we
doing filling the road with our carts at the exact moment that
such-and-such a Division wished to move.

I heard Semyonov's voice, very cold, official and polite. Then again:
"Well, in God's name, hurry then! ... taking up the road! ... hurry, I
tell you!"

On we jogged again. Trenchard's voice came to me: he had been,