yes ... yes, I shall have to be careful about flies.

I've had a headache all day, but then in the afternoon there was a
thunderstorm hovering somewhere near and there was no work to do. I
feel tired, too, and yet I can't sleep. Later in the afternoon we were
all sitting together, very quiet, not talking. I was thinking about
Semyonov then. I wondered whether he felt her death. How had he taken
it? Durward would tell me so little. I was so glad, all the same, that
he wasn't here. And yet, in the strangest way, I would like to have
spoken to him, to have asked him, if I had dared, a little about her.
He was the only man to whom she really gave herself. I don't grudge
him that--but there's so much that I want to know--and yet I'd die
rather than ask him. Die! That's an old phrase now--death would tell
me much more than Semyonov ever could. Just when we were sitting there
he came in. It was the most horrible shock. I don't want to put it
melodramatically but that was exactly what it was. I had been thinking
of him, thinking even of speaking to him, but I had known at the time
that he wasn't here, that he couldn't be here--then there he was in
the doorway--square and solid and grave and scornful. Now the horrible
thing is that the moment I realised him I felt afraid. I didn't feel
anger or hatred or fine desires for revenge--anything like
that--simply a miserable contemptible fear. It seems that as soon as
I climb out of one fear I tumble into another. They are not physical
now, but _worse_!

_Later._ The last bit seems rather silly. But I'll leave it.... As to
Semyonov. Of course he was very quiet and scornful with all of us. He
told Durward that he'd come to take his place and Durward went without
a word, Semyonov went off then with Nikitin, looking about, and making
suggestions! He changed some things but not very much. We had been
pretty intimate, all of us, before he came. I had really felt this
last day that Vladimir Stepanovitch and Andrey Vassilievitch were
understood by me. Russians come and go so. At one moment they are
close to you, intimate, open-hearted, then suddenly they shut up, are
miles away, look at you with distrust and suspicion. So with these
two. On Semyonov's arrival they changed absolutely. _He_ shut them up
of course. We were all as gloomy at supper as though we were deadly
enemies. But the worst thing was at night. Durward and I had slept in
one little room, Vladimir Stepanovitch and Andrey Vassi