He was to come to
me, later on, in a very different fashion, but on this dreadful day in
O---- he was simply part of the intolerable, depressing background.
If this day were dreadful to me what must it have been to Trenchard!
We were none of us aware at this time of what had happened to him two
days before, nor did we know of his adventure of yesterday. O----
seemed to him, he has told me, like hell.
We spent the day gathered together in a large white house that had
formerly been the town-hall of O----. It had, I remember, high empty
rooms all gilt and looking-glasses; the windows were broken and the
dust came, in circles and twisting spirals, blowing over the gilt
chairs and wooden floors.
We made tea and sat miserably together. Semyonov was in some other
part of the town. We were to wait here until Molozov arrived from
B----.
There can be few things so bad as the sense of insecurity that we had
that afternoon. The very ground seemed to have been cut away from
under our feet.
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