s it?"

"Why did you say it?" she cried sharply. "You don't trust me. You
think--"

"I think nothing," I answered. "Only he's not like ordinary men. He's
so much younger than his age."

She gave me then the strangest look. The light seemed suddenly to die
out of her face; her eyes sought mine as though for help. There were
tears in them.

"Oh! I do want to be good to him!" she whispered. Then got up abruptly
and joined the others.

Late in the afternoon an automobile arrived and carried off most of
our party. I was compelled to remain for several hours, and intended
to drive, looking forward indeed to the long quiet silence of the
spring evening. Moved by some sudden impulse I suggested to Trenchard
that he should wait and drive with me: "The car will be very
crowded," I said, "and I think too that you'd like to see some of the
country properly. It's a lovely evening--only thirty versts.... Will
you wait and come with me?"

He agreed at once; he had been, all day, very quiet, watching, with
that rather clumsy expression of his, the expression of a dog who had
been taught by his master some tricks which he had half-forgotten and
would presently be expected to remember.

When I made my suggestion he flung one look at Marie Ivanovna. She was
busied over some piece of luggage, and half-turned her head, smiling
at him:

"Ah, do go, John--yes? We will be so cr-rowded.... It will be very
nice for you driving."

I fancied that I heard him sigh. He tried to help the ladies with
their luggage, handed them the wrong parcels, dropped delicate
packages, apologised, blushed, was very hot, collected dust from I
know not where.... Once I heard a sharp, angry voice: "John! Oh!..." I
could not believe that it was Marie Ivanovna. Of course she was hot
and tired and had slept, last night, but little. The car, watched by
an inquisitive but strangely apathetic crowd of peasants, snorted its
way down the little streets, the green trees blowing and the starlings
chattering. In a moment the starlings and our two selves seemed to
have the whole dead little town to ourselves.

I saw quite clearly that he was unhappy; he could never disguise his
feelings; as he waited for the trap to appear he had the same lost and
abandoned appearance that he had on my first vision of him at the
Petrograd station. The soldier who was to drive us smiled as he saw
me.

"Only thirty versts, your honour ... or, thank God, even less. It will
take us n