"We all have our dreams," he continued. "But this came too often--again and again. The question of death became my constant preoccupation as I grew to think I would never see it, nor hear men speak of it, nor--" "And you have come," I could not but interrupt him, "here, to the very fortress--Why, man!--" "I know," he answered, smiling at me. "It must seem to you ridiculous. But I am a different person now--very different. Now I am ready, eager for anything. Death can be nothing to me now, or if that is too bold, at least I may say that I am prepared to meet him--anywhere--at any time. I want to meet him--I want to show--" "We have all," I said, "in our hearts, perhaps, come like that--come to prove that our secret picture of ourselves, that picture so different from our friends' opinion of us, is really the true one. We can fancy them saying afterwards: 'Well, I never knew that so-and-so had so much in him!' _We_ always knew." "No, you see," Trenchard said eagerly, "there can be only one person now about whose opinion I care. If _she_ thinks well of me--" "You are very much in love," I said, and loosed, as I had expected, the torrents of his happiness upon me. "I was in Polchester when the war broke out. The town received it rather as though a first-class company had come from London to act in the Assembly Rooms for a fortnight. It was dramatic and picturesque and pleasantly patriotic. They see it otherwise now, I fancy. I seemed at once to think of Russia. For one thing I wanted desperately to help, and I thought that in England they would only laugh at me as they had always done. I am short-sighted. I knew that I should never be a soldier. I fancied that in Russia they would not say: 'Oh, John Trenchard of Polchester.... _He's_ no good!' before they'd seen whether I could do anything. Then of course I had read about the country--Tolstoi and Turgeniev, and a little Dostoevsky and even Gorki and Tchekov. I went quite suddenly, making up my mind one evening. I seemed to begin to be a new man out of England. The journey delighted me.... I was in Moscow before I knew. I was there three months trying to learn Russian. Then I came to Petrograd and through the English Embassy found a place in one of the hospitals, where I worked as a sanitar for three months. I did not leave England until November, so that I have been in Russia now just six months. It was in this hospital that I met Miss Krassovsky--Marie Ivanovna. From the first moment I loved her, of course. And she liked me. She was the first woman, since my mother, who had really liked me. She quickly saw my devotion and she laughed a little, but she was always kind. I could talk to her and she liked to listen. She had--she has, great ideals, great hopes and ambitions. We worked together there and then, afterwards, in those beautiful spring evenings in Petrograd when the canals shone all night and the houses were purple, we walked.... The