is own incapacity, unpopularity,
ignorance. For a moment his love had given him a new confidence but
now how was that same love deserting him? He had foreseen a glorious
campaign, his lady and himself side by side, death and terror flying
before him. He found himself leading a country life of perfect quiet
and comfort, even as he might have led it in England, with a crowd of
people, strangely unfamiliar to him, driving him, as he had been
driven in the old days, into a host of awkwardnesses, confusions and
foolishnesses. I could not forgive Marie Ivanovna for her
disappointment in him, and yet I could understand how different he
must have appeared to her during those last days in Petrograd, when
alone with her and on fire with love, he had shown his true and
bravest self to her. She was impatient, she had hoped that the others
would see him as she had seen him. She watched them as they expressed
their surprise that he was not the practical, fearless and
unimaginative Englishman who was their typical figure. Whilst he found
them far from the Karamazovs, the Raskolnikoffs, of his imagination,
they in their turn could not create the "sportsman" and "man of
affairs" whom they had expected.

To all of this Semyonov added, beyond question, his personal weight.
He had from the first declared Trenchard "a ridiculous figure." Whilst
the others were unfailingly kind, hospitable and even indulgent to
Trenchard, Semyonov was openly satirical, making no attempt to hide
his sarcastic irony. I do not know how much Trenchard's engagement to
Marie Ivanovna had to do with this, but I know that "my Englishman"
could not to his misfortune have had a more practical, more efficient
figure against whom to be contrasted than Semyonov.

During these weeks I think that I hated Semyonov. There was, however,
one silent observer of all this business upon whose personal
interference I had not reckoned. This was Nikitin, who, at the end of
our first week at the school-house, broke his silence in a
conversation with me.

Nikitin, although he spoke as little as possible to any one, had
already had his effect upon the Otriad. They felt behind his silence a
personality that might indeed be equal to Semyonov's own. By little
Andrey Vassilievitch they were always being assured: "Nikitin! A most
remarkable man! You may believe me. I have known him for many years. A
great friend of my poor wife's and mine...."

They did not appear to be great friends. N