interest in human
character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited
by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself
ashamed of anything, and he most certainly did not intend to begin
now. He had never disguised his love for Marie Ivanovna and now she
was his "spoils"--won by his own strong piratical hand from the good
but rather feeble bark Trenchard--he manifested his scorn of us more
openly than ever.

He seemed to have grown rather stronger and stouter during these last
months, and his square stolidity was a thing at which to marvel. Had
he been taller, had his beard been pointed rather than square, he
would have been graceful and even picturesque--but his figure, as he
strode along, showed foursquare, as though it had been hewn out of
wood; one of those pale, almost white, honey-coloured woods would
give the effect of his fair beard and eyebrows. His thick red lips
were more startling than ever, curved as they usually were in cynical
contempt of some foolish victim. How he did despise us!

When one of our childish quarrels arose at meal-times he would say
nothing, but would continue stolidly his serious business of eating.
He was very fond of his food, which he ate in the greediest manner.
When the quarrel was subsiding, as it usually did, into the first
glasses of tea, he would look up, watch us with his contemptuous blue
eyes, laugh and say: "Well, and now?... Who is it next?"--and every
one would be clumsily embarrassed.

We were often, as are all Russian companies, ridiculously amused about
nothing. At the most serious crises we would, like Gayeff in "The
Cherry Orchard," suddenly break into stupid bursts of laughter, quite
aimless but with a great deal of sincerity. Whirls of laughter would
invade our table. "Oh, do look at Goga!" some one would say, and there
we all were, perhaps for a quarter of an hour! Semyonov, strangely
enough, shared this childish habit, and there was nothing odder than
to see the man lose control of himself, double himself up, laugh until
the tears ran down his face--simply at nothing at all!

The truth is that now I was very far from hating him. There were
moments, certainly, when he was rude to the Sisters, when he was
abominably greedy, when he was ruthlessly selfish, when he poured
scorn upon me; at such times I thought him, as Trenchard has expressed
it, a "beastly" man. He certainly had no great opinion of myself. "You
think yourself very