heart. And _in_ this Fortress it seemed to me that I,
who was watching, outside the lives of these others, an observer only
whom, perhaps, this same Fate despised, asked of God a sign. I saw
suddenly here the connexion, for which I had been waiting, between the
four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and
Trenchard--Two Wise Men and Two Fools--surely the rivalry was
ludicrous in its inequality ... and yet God does not judge as men do.
Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard? Who would be taken and
who left? I recalled Semyonov's jesting words: "Even though it's the
wise men succeed in this world I don't doubt it's the fools have their
way in the next."

I waited for my Sign....

Last of all I can hear it objected that every one was surely too busy
to attend to relationships or shades of relationships. But it was this
very thing that contributed to the situation, namely, that, in the
very stress of the work, there were hours, many hours, when there was
simply nothing to be done. Then if one could not sleep times were bad
indeed. Moreover, even in the throng of work itself one would be
conscious of that slipping off from one of all the trappings of
reality. One by one they would slip away and then, bewildered, one
would doubt the evidence of one's eyes, one's brain, one's ears, the
fatigue hammering, hammering at one's consciousness.... I have known
what that kind of strain can be.

I left on the second morning after my arrival and returned to Mittoevo
alone.

_Trenchard's Diary. Tuesday, August 10._ Durward has been here for two
days. He's a good fellow but I seem rather to have lost touch with him
during these last days. Then he's rather bloodless--a little more
humour would cheer him up wonderfully. We've all been in mad spirits
to-day as though we were drunk. The battery officers have got a
gramophone that we turned on. We danced a bit although it's hot as
hell.... Then in the evening my spirits suddenly went; Andrey
Vassilievitch gets on one's nerves. His voice is tiresome and I'm
tired of his wife. He tells me that he thinks he sees her at night.
"Do I think it likely?" Silly little ass--just the way to rot his
nerves. Funny thing to-night. We were playing _chemin-de-fer_.
Suddenly Semyonov said:

"Supposing Molozov says that only one of us is to stay on here." There
was silence after that. We all four looked at one another. All I knew
was nothing was going to move me away from this place