t the book, then turned round to me:

"Don't ever tell any one, Ivan Andreievitch, that I have been
afraid.... I'm never to be afraid again. And I'm not going to die. I
know now that life is wonderful--at last all that when I was young I
expected it to be.... Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I feel to-day as
though I would live for ever!..."

Semyonov came in. He was in splendid spirits; I had never seen him so
gay, so carelessly happy.

"Well," he cried to me, "we're to go now--at once ... and the next
time at eight. We'll leave you this time. We'll be back by half-past
six. We'll do the Third and Fourth Roti now. The Eighth and Ninth
afterwards. Can you wait for tea until we return? Good.... Half-past
six, then!"

They departed. As she went out of the door she turned and gave me a
little happy smile as though to bind me to an intimate enduring
confidence. I smiled back at her and she was gone.

After they had left me I felt very lonely. The house was still and
desolate, and I took a book that I had brought with me--the "Le Deuil
des Primeveres" of Francois Jammes. I had learnt the habit during my
first visit to the war of always taking a book in my pocket when
engaged upon any business; there were so many long weary hours of
waiting when the nerves were stretched, and a book--quiet and real and
something apart from all wars and all rumours of wars--was a most
serious necessity. What "Tristram Shandy" was to me once under fire
near Nijnieff, and "Red-gauntlet" on an awful morning when our whole
Otriad meditated on the possibility of imprisonment before the
evening--with nothing to be done but sit and wait! I went into the
garden with M. Jammes.

As I walked along the little paths through a tangle of wood and green
that might very well have presented the garden of the Sleeping Beauty,
I heard now and then a sound that resembled the swift flight of a bird
or the sudden "ting" of a telegraph-wire. The Austrians were amusing
themselves; sometimes a bullet would clip a tree in its passing or one
would see a leaf, quite suddenly detached, hover for a moment idly in
the air and then circle slowly to the ground. Except for this sound
the garden was fast held in the warm peace of a summer afternoon. I
found a most happy little neglected orchard with old gnarled
apple-trees and thick waving grass. Here I lay on my back, watching
the gold through the leaves, soaked in the apathy and somnolence of
the day, sinking idly into