bull is vexed by a
red flag. These things made him think a great deal about Trenchard. I
have seen him watching him with angry and puzzled gaze as though he
would satisfy himself why this gnat of a man worried him!

Then, finally, was Andrey Vassilievitch.... The little man had not
given me much of his company during these last weeks. I fancy that
since that night at the battle of S---- when he had revealed his
terror he had been shy of me although, God knows, he had no need to
be. He never forgot if any one had seen him in an unfortunate
position, and, although he bore me no grudge, he was nervous and
embarrassed with me. It happened, however, that during this same week
of which I have been speaking I had a conversation with him. I was
standing alone by the Cross watching a long trail of wagons cross the
bridge far beneath me, watching too a high bank of black cloud that
was passing away from the sky above the forest, blown by a wind that
rolled the surface of the river into silver. He too had come to look
at the view and was surprised and disturbed at finding me there. Of
course he was exaggerated in expressions of pleasure: "Why, Ivan
Andreievitch, this is delightful!" he cried. "If I only had known we
might have walked here together!"

We sat down on the stone seat.

"You don't think it will rain?" he asked anxiously. "No, those clouds
are going away, I see. Well ... this is delightful ..." and then sat
there gloomily looking in front of him.

I could see that he was depressed.

"Well, Andrey Vassilievitch," I said to him. "You're depressed about
something?"

"Yes," he said very gloomily indeed. "I have many unhappy hours, Ivan
Andreievitch."

I did not get up and leave him as I very easily might have done. I had
had, since the night when Nikitin had spoken to me so frankly, a
desire to know the little man's side of that affair. In some curious
fashion that silent plain wife of his had been very frequently in my
thoughts; there had not been enough in Nikitin's account to explain to
me his passion for her, and yet her ghost, as though evoked by the
memories both of Nikitin and her husband, had seemed to me, sometimes,
to be present with us....

I waited.

"Tell me frankly," Andrey Vassilievitch said at last, "am I of any use
here?"

"Of use?" I repeated, taken by surprise.

"Yes. Am I doing only what any one else can do as well? Would it be
better perhaps if another were here?"

"No, certainly not,"