any one and every one, and, with that triumphing
vitality that one felt in her from the first moment of meeting her,
she carried all before her. In the hospital at Petrograd they had
been, I gathered, "all serious and old," had treated her I fancy with
some sternness. Here, at any rate, "serious and old" she would not
find us. We welcomed, with joy, her youth, her enthusiasm, her
happiness.

Semyonov, who never disguised nor restrained his feelings, was, from
the first instant, strangely attracted to her. She, I could see, liked
him very much, felt in him his strength and capacity and scorn of
others. Molozov also yielded her his instant admiration. He always
avoided any close personal relationship with any of us but I could see
that he was delighted with her vitality and energy. She pleased the
older Sisters by her frank and quite honest desire to be told things
and the younger Sisters by her equally honest admiration of their
gifts and qualities. She was honest and sincere, I do believe, in
every word and thought and action. She had, in many ways, the naive
purity, the unconsidered faith and confidence of a child still in the
nursery. She amazed me sometimes by her ignorance; she delighted me
frequently by her refreshing truth and straightforwardness. She felt a
little, I think, that I did not yield her quite the extravagant
admiration of the others. I was Trenchard's friend....

Yes, I was now Trenchard's friend. What had occurred since that night
in the train, when I had felt, during the greater part of the time,
nothing but irritation? Frankly, I do not know. It may be, partly,
that he was given to me by the rest of the Otriad. He was spoken of
now as "my" Englishman. And then, poor Trenchard!... How, during this
fortnight, he was unhappy! It had begun with him as I had foreseen. In
the first place he had been dismayed and silenced by the garrulity of
his new companions. It had seemed to him that he had understood
nothing of their conversation, that he was in the way, that finally he
was more lonely than he had ever been in his life before. Then,
however strongly he might to himself deny it, he had arrived in Russia
with what Nikitin called "his romantic notions." He had read his
Dostoevski and Turgenev; he had looked at those books of Russian
impressions that deal in nothing but snow, ikons, and the sublime
simplicity of the Russian peasant. He was a man whose circumstances
had led him to believe profoundly in h