led, two
wounded. Five yards' distance. 8.30, breakfasted; K. arrived
from the 'Doll's House'--all quiet there," and so on. This,
I knew, was the proper way to look at the affair: "6.0 A.
M., down to the battery. 7.0 A. M., breakfasted. 8.0 A. M.,
dead...." For the life of me now I could not look at it like
that. I saw a thousand things that were, perhaps, not really
there, but were there at any rate for me. If I was beaten
to-night I was beaten once and for all.... I saw the shining
road under the starlight and shadows of wounded men,
groaning and stumbling, whispering their way along.

"Let's go," said Nikitin.

I drew a breath and stepped out into the moonlight. A shell
burst with a delicate splash of fire amongst the stars. The
road looked very long and very, very lonely.

However, soon I found myself walking along it quite casually
and talking about unimportant peaceful things. "Come," I
thought to myself. "This really isn't so bad."

"It's a great pity," Nikitin said, "that I can't read
English. Have to take your novelists as they choose to give
them us. Who is there now in England?"

"Well," said I as one talks in a dream, "there's Hardy, and
Henry James, and Conrad. I've seen translations of Conrad in
Petrograd. And then there's Wells--"

"Yes, Wells I know. But he writes stories for boys....
There's Jack London, but his are American. I like to read an
English novel sometimes. Your English life is so cosy. You
have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We
don't know what comfort is in Russia."

A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three
rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly
together on the far horizon.

"No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I
fancy that an English country-house...."

We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away
from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the
reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and
unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep.

On the left of the road there was a house standing back in
its own garden. I could see dimly that this was a row of
country villas.

"Stand by this gate five minutes," Nikitin whispered to me.
"I must find the Colonel. The sanit