"I beg your pardon," I said
irritably to Trenchard, "but your boot is in my neck!"
CHAPTER IV
NIKITIN
But this is not my story. If I have hitherto taken the chief place it
is because, in some degree, the impressions of Trenchard, Marie
Ivanovna, Andrey Vassilievitch must, during those first days, have run
with my own. We had all been brought to the same point--that last
vision from the hill of the battle of S---- and from that day we were
no longer apprentices.
I now then retire. What happened to myself during the succeeding
months is of no matter. But two warnings may be offered. The first is
that it must not be supposed that the experiences of myself, of
Trenchard, of Nikitin in this business found their parallel in any
other single human being alive. It would be quite possible to select
every individual member of our Otriad and to prove from their case
that the effect of war upon the human soul--whether Russian or
English--was thus and thus. A study, for example, might be made of
Anna Petrovna to show that the effect of war is simply nothing at all,
that any one who pretends to extract cases and contrasts from the
contact of war with the soul is simply peddling in melodrama.
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