of blue
between the trees and the golden stars of sunlight that flashed and
sparkled there.

Happiness and peace wrapped me round. I cannot pretend to disentangle
and produce in proper sequence all the thoughts and memories that
floated into my vision and away again, but I know that whereas before
thoughts had attacked me as though they were foul animals biting at my
brain, now I seemed myself gently to invite my memories.

Many scenes from my Polchester days that I had long forgotten came
back to me. I was indeed startled by the clearness with which I saw
that earlier figure--the very awkward, careless, ugly boy, listening
lazily to other people's plans, taking shelter from life under a vague
love of beauty and an idle imagination; the man, awkward and ugly,
sensitive because of his own self-consciousness, wasting his hours
through his own self-contempt which paralysed all effort, still
trusting to his idle love of beauty to pull him through to some
superior standard, complaining of life, but never trying to get the
better of it; then the man who came to Russia at the beginning of the
war, still self-centred, always given up to timid self-analysis, but
responding now a little to the new scenes, the new temperament, the
new chances. Then this man, feeling that at last he was rid of all the
tiresome encumbrances of the earlier years, lets himself go, falls in
love, worships, dreams for a few days a wonderful dream--then for the
first time in his life, begins to fight.

I saw all the steps so clearly and I saw every little thought, every
little action, every little opportunity missed or taken, accumulating
until the moment of climax four hours before. I seemed to have brought
Polchester on my back to the war, and I could see quite clearly how
each of us--Marie, Semyonov, Nikitin, Durward, every one of us--had
brought _their_ private histories and scenes with _them_. War is made
up, I believe, not of shells and bullets, not of German defeats and
victories, Russian triumphs or surrenders, English and French battles
by sea and land, not of smoke and wounds and blood, but of a million
million past thoughts, past scenes, streets of little country towns,
lonely hills, dark sheltered valleys, the wide space of the sea, the
crowded traffic of New York, London, Berlin, yes, and of smaller
things than that, of little quarrels, of dances at Christmas time, of
walks at night, of dressing for dinner, of waking in the morning, of
m