"A cigarette, then?"
Trenchard again refused and Piotr Ivanovitch, having done his duty,
relapsed into his muffled elegance. We sat very quietly there;
Trenchard staring with distressed eyes in front of him. Andrey
Vassilievitch, very uncomfortable, his fat body sliding forward on the
slant, pulling itself up, then sliding again--always he maintained his
air of importance, giving his cough, twisting the ends of his
moustache, staring, fiercely, at some one suddenly that he might
disconcert him, patting, with his plump little hands, his clothes.
The shadows lengthened and a great green oak that hung over the barn
seemed, as the evening advanced, to grow larger and larger and to
absorb into its heart all the flaming colours of the day, to press
them into its dark shadow and to hide them, safe and contented, until
another morning.
I sat there and gradually, caught, as it seemed to me, into a world of
whispers and half-lights, I slipped forward a little down into the
dark walls of the trench and half-slumbered, half clung still to the
buzzing voice of the Colonel, the languid replies of the young
officer.
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