"We've got to stick to our Division," I answered. "They can't have it in reserve very long. When it goes, we'll go. The whole secret of leading this life out here is taking exactly what comes as completely as you can take it. If it's a time for sleeping and eating, sleep and eat--there'll be days enough when you'll get nothing of either." She laughed then, swinging round to me, with the dusk round her white nurse's cap and her eyes dark with her desires and hopes and disappointments. "Oh, I've no right to be discontented.... Every one is so good to me. I love them all--even you, Mr. Durward. But I want to begin, to begin, to begin! I want to see what it's like, to find what there is there that frightens them, or makes them happy. We had a young officer in our hospital who died. He was too ill ... he could tell us nothing, but he was so excited by something ... something he was in the middle of.... Who was it? What was it? I _must_ be there, hunt it out, find that I'm strong enough not to be afraid of _anything_." She suddenly dropped her voice, changing with sharp abruptness. "And John? He's not happy here, is he?" "You should know," I answered, "better than any of us." "Why should I know?" she replied, flaming out at me. "You always blame me about him, but you are unfair. I want him to be happy--I would make him so if I could. But he's so strange, so different from his time at the hospital. He will scarcely speak to me or to any one. Why can't he be agreeable to every one? I want them to like him but how can they when he won't talk to them and runs away if they come near him? He's disappointed perhaps at its being so quiet here. It isn't what he expected to find it, but then isn't that the same for all of us? And _we_ don't sulk all day. He's disappointed with _me_ perhaps but he won't tell me what he wants. If I ask him he only says 'Oh, it's all r-right--it's all r-right'--I hate that 'all r-right' of your language--so stupid! What a purpose not to say if he wants something?" I said nothing. My silence urged her to a warmer defence. "And then he makes such mistakes--always everything wrong that he's asked to do. Doctor Semyonov laughs at him--but of course! He's like a little boy, a man as old as he is. And Englishmen are always so practical, capable. Oh! speak to him, Mr. Durward; you can, please. If _I_ say anything he's at once so miserable.... I don't understand, I don't understand!" she cried, raising her hands with a little despairing gesture. "How can he have been like that in Petrograd, and now like this!" "Give him time, Marie Ivanovna," I answered her. "This is all new to him, confusing, alarming. He's led a very quiet life. He's very sensitive. He cares for you so deeply that the slightest thing wounds him. He would hide that if he could--it's his tragedy that he can't."