ed on our feet, brought a shower of dust and whitewash from the
walls, cracked the one remaining pane of glass and drove two mice
scattering with terror wildly across the floor. The noise had been
terrific. Our very hearts stood still. The Austrians were here
then.... This was the end....

"It's the bridge," Semyonov said quietly, and of course ironically.
"We've blown it up. There'll be the other in a moment."

There was--a second shock brought down more dust and a large scale of
gilt wood from one of the cornices. We waited then for our orders,
looking down from the windows on to what seemed a perfect babel of
disorder and confusion.

"We must be at X---- to-night," Molozov told us. "The Staff is on its
way already. We should be moving in half an hour."

We made our preparations.

Trenchard, meanwhile, had had during this afternoon one driving
compelling impulse beyond all others, that he must, at all costs,
escape all personal contact with Marie Ivanovna. It seemed to him the
most awful thing that could possibly happen to him now would be a
compulsory conversation with her. He did not, of course, know that
she had spoken to us, and he thought that it would be the easiest
thing in all the confusion that this retreat involved that he should
be flung up against her. He sought his chief refuge in Nikitin. I am
aware that in the things I have said of Nikitin, in speaking both of
his relation to Andrey Vassilievitch's wife and to Trenchard himself,
I have shown him as something of a sentimental figure. And yet
sentimental was the very last thing that he really was. He had not the
"open-heartedness" that is commonly asserted to be the chief glory and
the chief defect of the Russian soul. He had talked to me because I
was a foreigner and of no importance to him--some one who would be
entirely outside his life. He took Trenchard now for his friend I
believe because he really was attracted by the admixture of chivalry
and helplessness, of simplicity and credulity, of timidity and courage
that the man's character displayed. I am sure that had it been I who
had been in Trenchard's position he would not have stretched out one
finger to help me.

Trenchard himself had only vague memories of the events of the
preceding evening. He was aware quite simply that the whole thing had
been a horrible dream and that "nothing so bad could ever possibly
happen to him again." He had "touched the worst," and he undoubtedly
found some r