"John, I'm your friend. I've been bad to you, but I'm your friend. I don't understand why I've been so bad to you because, I would be fur-rious--yes, fur-rious--if any one else were bad to you. And be mine, John, whatever I do, be mine. I'm not really a bad character--only I think it's too exciting now, here--everything--for me to stop and think." "You know," he answered with a rather tired gesture (he had worked in that hot theatre all the morning) "that I am always the same--but you must not marry Semyonov," he added fiercely. She did not answer him, looked up at the sunlight and said after a time: "I hate Sister K----. She is not really religious. She doesn't wash either. Let us go back. I was away, I said, only for a little." They walked back, he told me, in perfect silence. He was more unhappy than ever. He was more unhappy because he saw quite clearly that he did not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than ever and loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things. If he had taken that sentence of hers--"I think it's too exciting--now--here--for me to stop and think," he would, I fancy, have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was so simple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatest discomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for a moment. His diary for these four days is very short and unromantic. "_June 23rd._ In X----. Morning worked in the theatre. Bandaged thirty. Operation 1--arm amputated. Learn that there has been a battle round the school-house at O---- where we first were. Wonderful weather. Spent some time in the park. Talked to M. there. Evening moved--thirty versts to P----. Much dust, very slow, owing to the Guards retreating at same time. Was with Durward and Andrey Vassilievitch in a _Podvoda_--Like the latter, but he's out of place here. Arrived 1.30. "_June 24th._ Off early morning. This time black carriage with Sisters K---- and Anna Petrovna. More dust--thousands of soldiers passing us, singing as though there were no retreat. News from L---- very bad. Say there's no ammunition. Arrived Nijnieff evening 7.30. Very hungry and thirsty. We could find no house for some hours; a charming little town in a valley. Nestor seems huge--very beautiful with wooded hills. But whole place so swallowed in dust impossible to see anything. Heaps of wounded again. I and Molozov in nice room alone. Have not seen M. all day. "_June 25th._ This morning Nikitin, Sister K----, Goga, and I attempted to get back to P---- to see whether there were wounded. Started off on the carts but when we got to the hill above the village met the whole of our Division coming out. The village abandoned, so back we had to go again through all the dust. Evening nothing doing. Every one depressed.