No one replied. We passed as though in a dream, meeting no one, hearing no sound, the light dancing and flickering on our path. I nodded on my seat. I was half asleep when we arrived at our destination. This was the accustomed white deserted house standing in a desolate tangled garden. There was no one there on our arrival. All the doors were open, the sun blazing along the dusty passages. It was inhabited, just then, I believe, by some artillery officers, but I saw none of them. Semyonov went off to find the Colonel of the regiment to whom we were to give tea; Marie Ivanovna and I remained in one of the empty rooms, the only sound the buzzing flies. Every detail of that room will remain in my heart and brain until I die. Marie Ivanovna, looking very white and cool, with the happiness shining in her large clear eyes, sat on an old worn sofa near the window. In the glass of the window there were bullet holes, and beyond the window a piece of blazing golden garden. The room was very dirty, dust lay thick upon everything. Some one had eaten a meal there, and there was a plate, a knife, also egg-shells, an empty sardine-tin, and a hunk of black bread. There was a book which I picked up, attracted by the English lettering on the faded red cover. It was a "Report on the Condition of New Mexico in 1904"--a heavy fat volume with the usual photographs of water-falls, cornfields and enormous sheep. On the walls there was only one picture, a torn supplement from some German magazine showing father returning to his family after a long absence--welcomed, of course, by child (fat and ugly), wife (fatter and uglier), and dog (a mongrel). There was the usual pile of fiction in Polish, translations I suspect of Conan Doyle and Jerome; there was a desolate palm in a corner and a chipped blue washing stand. A hideous place: the sun did not penetrate and it should have been cool, but for some reason the air was heavy and hot as though we were enclosed in a biscuit-tin. I leaned against the table and looked at Marie Ivanovna. "Isn't it strange?" I said, "we're only a verst or two from the Austrians and not a sound to be heard. But the gendarme told me that we must be careful here. A good many bullets flying about, I believe." "Ah!" she said laughing. "I don't feel as though anything could touch me to-day. I never loved life before as I love it now. Is it right to be so happy at such a time as this and in such a place?... And how strange it is that through all the tragedy one can only truly see one's own little affairs, and only feel one's own little troubles and joys. That's bad ... one should be punished for that!"