"Don't ever tell any one, Ivan Andreievitch, that I have been afraid.... I'm never to be afraid again. And I'm not going to die. I know now that life is wonderful--at last all that when I was young I expected it to be.... Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I feel to-day as though I would live for ever!..." Semyonov came in. He was in splendid spirits; I had never seen him so gay, so carelessly happy. "Well," he cried to me, "we're to go now--at once ... and the next time at eight. We'll leave you this time. We'll be back by half-past six. We'll do the Third and Fourth Roti now. The Eighth and Ninth afterwards. Can you wait for tea until we return? Good.... Half-past six, then!" They departed. As she went out of the door she turned and gave me a little happy smile as though to bind me to an intimate enduring confidence. I smiled back at her and she was gone. After they had left me I felt very lonely. The house was still and desolate, and I took a book that I had brought with me--the "Le Deuil des Primeveres" of Francois Jammes. I had learnt the habit during my first visit to the war of always taking a book in my pocket when engaged upon any business; there were so many long weary hours of waiting when the nerves were stretched, and a book--quiet and real and something apart from all wars and all rumours of wars--was a most serious necessity. What "Tristram Shandy" was to me once under fire near Nijnieff, and "Red-gauntlet" on an awful morning when our whole Otriad meditated on the possibility of imprisonment before the evening--with nothing to be done but sit and wait! I went into the garden with M. Jammes.