clever, Ivan Andreievitch. Yes, you think you're
watching all of us and studying all our characters. And I suppose
there'll be a book one day, another of those books by Englishmen about
poor Russians--and you'll flatter yourself that now at last one true
picture has been given ... but let me tell you that you'll never know
anything really about us so long as you're a sentimentalist!"

Yes, there were moments when I hated him, but those moments never
continued for long. For one thing one could not hate so magnificent, so
honest, so uncompromising, so efficient a worker! He was worthy of some
very high position in the army, and he could certainly have attained any
height had he chosen. He had a genius for compelling other men to obey
him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no
attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed
incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he
had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed
with us when he, so openly, despised us all. Until the arrival of Marie
Ivanovna there was no answer to these questions--after that the answer
was obvious enough. Again, one could not hate a man of his sterling
independence of character. We were, all of us I think, emotionalists, of
one kind or another, and went up and down in our feelings, alliances,
severances, trusts and distrusts, as a thermometer goes up and down. We
were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not "a
strong lot." Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy
idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come
down from his dreams and see things as they were.

But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position. He asked
no man's help nor advice, minded no man's scorn, sought no man's love.
During my experience of him I saw him moved only once by an
overmastering emotion, and that was, of course, his love for Marie
Ivanovna. That, I believe, _did_ master him, but deep down, deep down,
he kept his rebellions, his anxieties, his surmises; only as the
light of a burning house is seen by men, pale and faint upon the sky
many miles from the conflagration, did we catch signs of his trouble.
If I had not had those talks with Trenchard and read his diary I
should have known nothing. Even now I can offer no solution....

Meanwhile he showed fiercely and openly enough his love for Marie
Ivanovna. He behaved to