very dirty, dust lay thick upon
everything. Some one had eaten a meal there, and there was a plate, a
knife, also egg-shells, an empty sardine-tin, and a hunk of black
bread. There was a book which I picked up, attracted by the English
lettering on the faded red cover. It was a "Report on the Condition of
New Mexico in 1904"--a heavy fat volume with the usual photographs of
water-falls, cornfields and enormous sheep. On the walls there was
only one picture, a torn supplement from some German magazine showing
father returning to his family after a long absence--welcomed, of
course, by child (fat and ugly), wife (fatter and uglier), and dog (a
mongrel). There was the usual pile of fiction in Polish, translations
I suspect of Conan Doyle and Jerome; there was a desolate palm in a
corner and a chipped blue washing stand. A hideous place: the sun did
not penetrate and it should have been cool, but for some reason the
air was heavy and hot as though we were enclosed in a biscuit-tin.

I leaned against the table and looked at Marie Ivanovna.

"Isn't it strange?" I said, "we're only a verst or two from the
Austrians and not a sound to be heard. But the gendarme told me that
we must be careful here. A good many bullets flying about, I believe."

"Ah!" she said laughing. "I don't feel as though anything could touch
me to-day. I never loved life before as I love it now. Is it right to
be so happy at such a time as this and in such a place?... And how
strange it is that through all the tragedy one can only truly see
one's own little affairs, and only feel one's own little troubles and
joys. That's bad ... one should be punished for that!"

I loved her at that moment; I felt bitterly, I remember, that I,
because I was plain and a cripple, silent and uninteresting, would
never win the love of such women. I remembered little Andrey
Vassilievitch's words about his wife: "For me she cared as good women
care for the poor." In that way for me too women would care--when they
cared at all. And always, all my life, it would be like that. How
unfair that everything should be given to the Semyonovs and the
Nikitins of this world, everything denied to such men as Trenchard,
Andrey Vassilievitch and I!...

But my little grumble passed as I looked at her.

How honest and straight and true with her impulses, her enthusiasms,
her rebellions and ignorances she was! Yes, I loved her and had always
loved her. That was why I had cared for Trench