ars will come and fetch
you when I've settled the spot for our bandaging."

Nikitin disappeared and I was quite alone. I felt terribly
desolate. I stood back against the gate of the villa
watching soldiers hurry by, seeing high mysterious hedges,
the roofs of houses, a line of lighted sky, the tops of
trees, all these things rising and falling as the glare in
the heavens rose and fell. There was sometimes a terrible
noise and sometimes an equally terrible stillness. Somewhere
in the darkness a man was groaning, "Oh! ah!--Oh! ah!"
without cessation. Somewhere the gate of one of the villas
swung to and fro, creaking. Sometimes soldiers would stare
at my motionless figure and then pass on. All this time, as
in one's dreams sometimes one holds off a nightmare, I was
keeping my fear at bay. I had now exactly the sensation that
I had known so often in my dream, that I was standing
somewhere in the dark, that the Enemy was watching me and
waiting to spring. But to-night I was only _nearly_ afraid.
One step on my part, one extra noise, one more flare of
light, and I would abandon myself to panic, but, although
the perspiration was wet on my forehead, my heart thumping,
and my hands dry and hot, I was not yet _quite_ afraid.

I had a strange sensation of suffocation, as though I were
at the bottom of a well, a well black and damp, with the
stars of the sky miles away. There came to me, with a kind
of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at
home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with a
palm in an ugly brass pot just behind it, the table near the
door with a brass Indian tray and a fat photograph-book
with, gilt clasps, the picture of "Christ being Scourged"
above the fireplace, and the green silk screen that stood
under the picture in the summer.

A soldier stopped and spoke to me: "Your Honour, it's on the
right--the next gate." I followed him without attention,
having no doubt but that this was one of our own sanitars,
and accompanied a group of soldiers that surrounded a
bobbing kitchen on wheels. I was puzzled by the kitchen
because I knew that one had not been brought by our Otriad,
but I thought that the doctors of the Division had perhaps
begged our men to aid the army sanitars.

We hurri