d damage _him_. I remembered that
night of the Retreat when he had helped me and, as though he were
appealing visibly to me there in the room, I responded; I seemed to
feel that he was fighting some battle of his own and that my victory
would fortify him. I stood with him beside me. So I fought it, fought
it with the sweat dripping down my nose and my tongue dry. "No!"
something suddenly cried in me. "If she's his, she's his--I will not
take her this way!"--then in a snivelling, miserable fashion I began
to cry, simply from exhaustion and nerves and headache. I slipped down
into a chair. I sat there feeling utterly beaten and yet in some dim
way, as one hears a trumpet sounding behind a range of hills, I was
triumphant. There with my head on the table and my nose, I believe, in
a plate left from some one's last night's supper, I slept a heavy,
dreamless sleep.

I woke and heard a clock in the room strike three. I got up, stretched
my arms, yawned and knew that my head was clear and my brain at peace.
I can't describe my feelings better than by saying that it was as
though I had put my brain and my heart and all my fears and terrors
under a good stiff pump of cold water. I felt a different man from
four hours before, although still desperately tired and physically
weak.

I went softly upstairs. The light of a most lovely summer morning
flooded the room. Semyonov was lying, sleeping like a child, his head
pillowed on his arm. Very cautiously I dressed, then went downstairs
again. I did not understand now--the peace and happiness in my heart.
All the time I was saying to myself: "Why am I so happy? Why am I so
happy?"...

The world was marvellously fresh, with little white glittering clouds
above the trees, the grass wet and shining, and the sky a high dome of
blue light, like the inside of a glass bell that has the sun behind
it. Here and there on the outskirts of the Forest fires were still
dimly burning, pale and dim yellow shadows beneath the sun. Men
wrapped in their coats were sleeping in little groups under the trees.
Horses cropped at the grass; soldiers were moving with buckets of
water. Two men, at the very edge of the Forest, stripped to the waist,
were washing in a pool that was like a blue handkerchief in the great
forest of green. I found a little glade, very bright and fresh, under
a group of silver birch, and there I lay down on my back, my hands
behind my head, looking up into the little dancing atoms