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Show (H- 'l‘lllC DARK FOREST THE S(7HOOI.-ll()l'SE one because that permits us to indulge in it-but when we see in another goodness. strena'th, virtue. we worship it. You may bind us to you with bands of iron by your virtue s ~‘never, as all foreigners think, by your vices. In this, too, we are sentimentalists. \Ve may not believe in God but. we have an intense curiosity about llini--a curios ity that with many of us never leaves us alone, compels us to till our lives, to till our lives. . . . \Ve love llussia. lint that is another thina‘. . . . Never forget: too that be hind every llussian's simplicity there is always his ldeal~- his secret ldeal, perhaps, that he keeps like an ikon sacred in his heart. Yes. of every ,llussian, even of the Worst of us, that is true. And it complicates our lives, delivers us to our enemies, defeats all our Worldly aims, renders us help- less at the moment when we should be most strong. But it is good, before God. that it should be so. . . .7' He suddenly sprang up and stood before me. "Tomorrow I shall think otherwise~and yet this is part of the truth that I have told you. . . . And your Englishman? I like him . . . I like him. That girl will treat him badly, of course. How can she do otherwise? Turgenev's Liza. "Yell, she is not that. He sees her like No girl in Russia to-day is like Turgeuev's Liza. And it's a good thing." Ile smiled that strange, happy, confident mysterious smile that I had seen first on the Petrograd platform. Then he turned and walked slowly towards the house. What Nikitin had said about Trenehard's expectation of "romantic war" was perhaps true, in different degrees, of all of us. Even I, in spite of my earlier experience, felt some irritation at this delay, and to those of us who had arrived flaming with energy, bravery, resolution to make their name before Europe, this feasting in a country garden seemed a deliberate insult. Was this "romantic war?" 6;") These long meals under the trees, deep sleeps in the. afternoon when the pigeons eooed round the little red bell-tower and the pump ereaked in the cobbled courtyard and the bees hurnmed in the garden? Bees, cold water shining deep in the well. and the samovar chuckling behind the flower beds, and fifteen versts away the Austrians challenging the Russian nation! . . . "You know," Andrey \‘assilitwitch said to me, "it's very disheartening." Marie Ivanovna at the end of the first week spoke, her mind. I found her one evening.r before supper leaning over the fence, gazing across the lone tlat lield. pale gold in the dusk with the hills like grey clouds beyond it. "They tell me.H she said, turninpr to me, "that. we may be another fortnight like this." "Yes," I said, "it's quite possible, or even longer. We can't provide wounded and battles for you if there aren‘t any." "But there are 3" she cried. "Isn't the whole ot' lCuI‘I'l‘" fighting and isn't it simply disgusting: of us to he sittin:" down here, eating and sleeping, just. as though we were in a (Malta in the country? .\t least in the. lltlhlllllll in l'etrograd I was working . . . here. . . "\Velve got to stick to our Division," I answered. "They can't have it in reserve very long. When it goes. we'll go. The whole secret of leading" this life out here is ltllx'ltl‘" exactly what comes as completely as you can take it. It in.a time for sleeping and eating. sleep and eat there‘ll be days enough when you'll get nothing of either." She laughed then, swinging round to me, with the dusk round her white nurse's cap and her eyes dark With her desires and hopes and disappointments. "Oh. I've no right to be discontented. . . . l‘.very one H to good to me. I love them all «wen you, Mr. Durward. |