I was drowsy. I saw Polchester High Street, Garth in Roselands, Clinton, Truxe, best of all Rafiel. I went down the high white hill, deep into the valley, then along the road beside the stream where the houses begin, the hideous Wesleyan Chapel on my right, "Ebenezer Villa" on my left, then the cottages with the gardens, then the little street, the post-office, the butcher's, the turn of the road and, suddenly, the bay with the fishing boats riding at anchor and beyond the sea.... England and Russia! to their strong and confident union I thought that I would give every drop of my blood, every beat of my heart, and as I lay there I seemed to see on one side the deep green lanes at Rafiel and on the other the shining canals, the little wooden houses, the cobbler and the tufted trees of Petrograd, the sea coast beyond Truxe and the wide snow-covered plains beyond Moscow, the cathedral at Polchester and the Kremlin, breeding their children, to the hundredth generation, for the same hopes, the same beliefs, the same desires. I slept in the sun and had happy dreams. I have re-read these last pages and I find some very fine stuff about--"giving every drop of blood," etc., etc. Of course I am not that kind of man. Men, like Durward and myself--he resembles me in many ways, although he is stronger than I am, and doesn't care what people think of him--are too analytical and self-critical to give much of their blood to anybody or to make their blood of very much value if they did. I only meant that I would do my best. Later in the morning the firing began again pretty close. Andrey Vassilievitch came to me and wanted to talk to me. I was rather short with him because I was busy. He wanted to tell me that he hoped I hadn't misunderstood his quarrel with Nikitin last night. It had been nothing at all. His nerves had been rather out of order. He was very much better to-day, felt quite another man. He _looked_ another man and I said so. He said that I did.... Strange, but I felt as I looked at him that he was sickening for some bad illness. One feels that sometimes about people without being able to name a cause. I have an affection for the little man--but he's an awful fool. Well, so am I. But fools never respect fools.... Strange to see Semyonov. I had expected him for some reason to be different to-day. Just the same, of course, very sarcastic to me. I had a hole in one of my pockets and was always forgetting and putting money and things into it. This seemed to annoy him. But to-day nothing matters. Even the flies do not worry me. All the morning Marie has seemed so close to me. I have a strange excitement, the feeling that one has when one is in a train that approaches the place where some one whom one loves is waiting.... I feel exactly as though I were going on a journey....