n our Otriad had been like the painful return to drab
reality after a splendid dream. "After all I am the hopeless creature
I thought I was. What was there, in those days in Petrograd, that
could blind me?" His shyness returned, his awkwardness, his mistakes
in tact and resource were upon him again like a suit of badly made
clothes. He knew this but he believed that it could make no difference
to his lady. So sure was he of himself in regard to her--she might be
transformed into anything hideous or vile and still now he would love
her--that he could not believe that she would change. The love that
had come to them was surely eternal--it must be, it must be, it must
be....

He failed altogether to understand her youth, her inexperience, above
all her coloured romantic fancy. Her romantic fancy had made him in
her eyes for a brief hour something that he was not. After a month at
the war I believe that she had grown into a woman. She had loved him
for an instant as a young girl loves a hero of a novel. And although
she was now a woman she must still keep her romantic fancy. He was no
longer part of that--only a clumsy man at whom people laughed. She
must, I think, have suffered at her own awakening, for she was honest,
impetuous, pure, if ever woman was those things.

He did not see her as she was--he still clung to his confidence; but
he began as the days advanced to be terribly afraid. His fears centred
themselves round Semyonov. Semyonov must have seemed to him an awful
figure, powerful, contemptuous, all-conquering. Any blunders that he
committed were doubled by Semyonov's presence. He could do nothing
right if Semyonov were there. He was only too ready to believe that
Semyonov knew the world and he did not, and if Semyonov thought him a
fool--it was quite obvious what Semyonov thought him--then a fool he
must be. He clung desperately to the hope that there would be a
battle--a romantic dramatic battle--and that in it he would most
gloriously distinguish himself. He believed that, for her sake, he
would face all the terrors of hell. The battle came and there were no
terrors of hell--only sick headache, noise, men desperately wounded,
and, once again, his own clumsiness. Then, in that final picture of
Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov he saw his own most miserable exclusion.

In the days that followed there was much work and he was forgotten. He
assisted in the bandaging-room; in later days he was to prove most
efficient a