She broke off, looked at him suddenly as he told me "very tenderly and
kindly as though she liked me."

"John, I'm your friend. I've been bad to you, but I'm your friend. I
don't understand why I've been so bad to you because, I would be
fur-rious--yes, fur-rious--if any one else were bad to you. And be
mine, John, whatever I do, be mine. I'm not really a bad
character--only I think it's too exciting now, here--everything--for
me to stop and think."

"You know," he answered with a rather tired gesture (he had worked in
that hot theatre all the morning) "that I am always the same--but you
must not marry Semyonov," he added fiercely.

She did not answer him, looked up at the sunlight and said after a
time:

"I hate Sister K----. She is not really religious. She doesn't wash
either. Let us go back. I was away, I said, only for a little."

They walked back, he told me, in perfect silence. He was more unhappy
than ever. He was more unhappy because he saw quite clearly that he
did not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than ever
and loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things.
If he had taken that sentence of hers--"I think it's too
exciting--now--here--for me to stop and think," he would, I fancy,
have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was so
simple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatest
discomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for a
moment. His diary for these four days is very short and unromantic.

"_June 23rd._ In X----. Morning worked in the theatre. Bandaged
thirty. Operation 1--arm amputated. Learn that there has been a battle
round the school-house at O---- where we first were. Wonderful
weather. Spent some time in the park. Talked to M. there. Evening
moved--thirty versts to P----. Much dust, very slow, owing to the
Guards retreating at same time. Was with Durward and Andrey
Vassilievitch in a _Podvoda_--Like the latter, but he's out of place
here. Arrived 1.30.

"_June 24th._ Off early morning. This time black carriage with Sisters
K---- and Anna Petrovna. More dust--thousands of soldiers passing us,
singing as though there were no retreat. News from L---- very bad. Say
there's no ammunition. Arrived Nijnieff evening 7.30. Very hungry and
thirsty. We could find no house for some hours; a charming little town
in a valley. Nestor seems huge--very beautiful with wooded hills. But
whole place so swallo