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,