We could
see the road, white and clear at our feet, melting into shadow beyond
us, and catching in the little misty pools the coloured reflection of
the morning sky.
The air was very fresh; a cock behind me welcomed the sun; the cold
band withdrew from my forehead.
Nikitin was silent and I, silent also, sat there, almost asleep, happy
and tranquil. It seemed to me very natural to him that he should
neither move nor speak, but after a time he began to talk. I had in
that early morning a strange impression, as though deep in my dreams I
was listening to some history. I know that I did not sleep and yet
even now as I recover his quiet voice and, I believe, many of his very
words, in reminiscence those hours are still dreaming hours. I know
that every word that he told me then was true in actual fact. And yet
it seems to me that we were all slumbering, the world at our feet, the
sun in the sky, the wounded in their tent, and that through the mist
of all that slumber Nikitin's voice, soft, measured, itself like an
echo of some other voice miles away, penetrated--but to my heart
rather than to my brain.
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