te eyes and jerking white hands irritated him.

He smiled a practical English smile and looked about him at the
swaying procession of carts and soldiers with a practical eye.

"Come," he said to Molozov, "don't despair. There's nothing really to
be distressed about. There _must_ be these retreats, you know. There
_must_ be. The great thing in this war is to see the whole thing in
proportion--the _whole_ thing. France and England and the Dardanelles
and Italy--_everything_. In another month or two--"

But Molozov, frowning, shook his head.

"This country ... no method ... no system. _Nothing._ It is terrible....
_That's_ a pretty girl!" he added moodily, looking at a group of
peasants in a doorway. "A _very_ pretty girl!" he added, sitting up a
little and staring. Then he relapsed, "No system--_nothing_," he
murmured.

"But there _will_ be," continued Trenchard in his English voice. (He
told me afterwards that he was conscious at the time of a horrible
priggish superiority.) "Here in Russia you go up and down so. You've
no restraint. Now if you had discipline--"

But he was interrupted by the melancholy figure of an officer who hung
on to our slowly moving carriage, walking beside it with his hand on
the door. He did not seem to have anything very much to say but looked
at us with large melancholy eyes. He was small and needed dusting.

"What is it?" asked Molozov, saluting.

"I've had contusion," said the little officer in a dreamy voice.
"Contusion ... I don't feel very well. I don't quite know where I
ought to go."

"Our doctors are just behind," said Molozov. "You can come on with
them."

"Your doctors ..." the little officer repeated dreamily. "Very
well...." But he continued with us. "I've had contusion," he said. "At
M----. Yes.... And now I don't quite know where I am. I'm very
depressed and unhappy. What do you advise?"

"There are our doctors," Molozov repeated rather irritably. "You'll
find them ... behind there."

"Yes, I suppose so," the melancholy little figure repeated and
disappeared.

In some way this figure affected Trenchard very dismally and drove all
his English common sense away. We were moving now slowly through
clouds of dust, and peasants who watched us from their doorways with a
cold indifference that was worse than exultation.

When we arrived, at two or three in the morning, at X----, our
destination, the spirits of all of us were heavily weighted. Tired,
cross, dirty, drive