But now, behold, Semyonov had his rival! If Semyonov cared nothing for any of us, Nikitin, it was plain enough, cared nothing for Semyonov. From the very first the two men had been opponents. It seemed as though Nikitin's great stature and fine air, as of a king travelling in disguise from some foreign country, made him the only man in the world to put out Semyonov's sinister blaze. Nikitin was an idealist, a mystic, a dreamer--everything that Semyonov was not. It is true that if we mattered nothing at all to Semyonov, we also mattered nothing at all to Nikitin, but for Nikitin there were dreams, visions, memories and hopes. We were contented to be banished from his attention when we were aware that happier objects detained him. We might envy him, we could not dislike him. Semyonov never sneered at Nikitin. From the first he left him absolutely alone. The two men simply avoided one another in so far as was possible in a company so closely confined as ours. From the first they treated one another with a high and almost extravagant politeness. As Nikitin spoke but seldom, there was little opportunity for the manifestation of what Semyonov must have considered "his childishly romantic mind," and Nikitin, on his side, made on no single occasion a reply to the challenge of Semyonov's caustic cynicism. But if Nikitin was an idealist he was also, as was quite evident, a doctor of absolutely first-rate ability and efficiency. I was present at the first operation that he conducted with us--an easy amputation. Semyonov was assisting and I know that he watched eagerly for some slip or hesitation. It was an operation that any medical student might have conducted with success, but the first incision of the knife showed Nikitin a surgeon of genius. Semyonov recognised it.... I fancied that from that moment I could detect in his attitude to Nikitin a puzzled wonder that such an artist could be at the same time such a fool.