appeared from the background. She also was red-cheeked and plump;
her hair also was arranged in black, shining curls. She stood looking
at us, half smiling, half defiant, sucking her finger.

"She also has known officers," said the girl. "She would be very glad,
if you cared--"

I heard their father behind the bar humming to himself.

"Come out of this!" I said to Trenchard. "Come away!"

He followed me quietly, bowing very politely to the staring
sisters....

"Go on," I said to Nikolai. "Drive on. No time to waste. We've got
work to do."

On our return we found that the press of work was not as yet severe.
Half the building belonged to us, the remaining half being used by the
officers of the battery. Nikitin had arranged a large room, that must
I think have been a dining-room in happier days, with beds; to the
right was the operating-room, overhead were our bedrooms and the room
where originally I had sat with Marie Ivanovna was a general meeting
place. The officers of the battery, two middle-aged and two very young
indeed, were extremely courteous and begged us to make use of them in
any way possible. They were living in the raggedest fashion, a week's
growth of beard on their chins, their beds unmade, the floor littered
with ends of cigarettes, pieces of paper, journals.

"Been here weeks," they apologetically explained to us. "Come in and
have a meal with us whenever you like." They resembled animals in a
cave. When they were not on duty they played _chemin-de-fer_ and
slept. Meanwhile for three days and nights our work was slight. The
battle drew further away into the Forest. Wagons with wounded came to
us only at long intervals.

The result of these three days was a strange new intimacy between the
four of us. I have never in all my life seen anything more charming
than the behaviour of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch to Trenchard.
There is something about Russian kindness that is both simpler and
more tactful than any other kindness in the world. Tact is too often
another name for insincerity, but Russian kindheartedness is the most
honest impulse in the Russian soul, the quality that comes first,
before anger, before injustice, before prejudice, before slander,
before disloyalty, and overrides them all. They were, of course,
conscious that Trenchard's case was worse than their own. Marie
Ivanovna's death had shocked them, but she had been outside their
lives and already she was fading from them. Trenc