not
find him, but that _he_ had found _me_. Then my knees would fail me, I
would sink down in a sweat of terror, and--wake!... Brrr!... I can see
it now!"

He shook himself, turning round to me as though he were suddenly
ashamed of himself, with a laugh half-shy, half-retrospective.

"We all have our dreams," he continued. "But this came too
often--again and again. The question of death became my constant
preoccupation as I grew to think I would never see it, nor hear men
speak of it, nor--"

"And you have come," I could not but interrupt him, "here, to the very
fortress--Why, man!--"

"I know," he answered, smiling at me. "It must seem to you ridiculous.
But I am a different person now--very different. Now I am ready, eager
for anything. Death can be nothing to me now, or if that is too bold,
at least I may say that I am prepared to meet him--anywhere--at any
time. I want to meet him--I want to show--"

"We have all," I said, "in our hearts, perhaps, come like that--come
to prove that our secret picture of ourselves, that picture so
different from our friends' opinion of us, is really the true one. We
can fancy them saying afterwards: 'Well, I never knew that so-and-so
had so much in him!' _We_ always knew."

"No, you see," Trenchard said eagerly, "there can be only one person
now about whose opinion I care. If _she_ thinks well of me--"

"You are very much in love," I said, and loosed, as I had expected,
the torrents of his happiness upon me.

"I was in Polchester when the war broke out. The town received it
rather as though a first-class company had come from London to act in
the Assembly Rooms for a fortnight. It was dramatic and picturesque
and pleasantly patriotic. They see it otherwise now, I fancy. I seemed
at once to think of Russia. For one thing I wanted desperately to
help, and I thought that in England they would only laugh at me as
they had always done. I am short-sighted. I knew that I should never
be a soldier. I fancied that in Russia they would not say: 'Oh, John
Trenchard of Polchester.... _He's_ no good!' before they'd seen
whether I could do anything. Then of course I had read about the
country--Tolstoi and Turgeniev, and a little Dostoevsky and even Gorki
and Tchekov. I went quite suddenly, making up my mind one evening. I
seemed to begin to be a new man out of England. The journey delighted
me.... I was in Moscow before I knew. I was there three months trying
to learn Russian. Then I c