It is real, I tell you." Let that false
reality be admitted and there is no more peace.
On this day there were the two sanitars, whose faces now he knew,
walking solidly beside his cart, there were the little orchards with
the soldiers' tents sheltering beneath them, the villages with the old
men, the women, the children, watching, like ghosts, their passage,
the fields in which the summer corn was ripening, the first trembling
heat and beauty of a quiet day in early June. No sound in the world
but peace, the woods opening around them as they advanced. He lay back
on his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeing
pictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, long
ago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, in
which dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit of
reminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of his
relationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that that
relationship was finally, hopelessly closed.
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