Marie Ivanovna with her hands
behind her back and her head up walked, nervously, up and down the
long room. Her eyes stared beyond us and the place, striving perhaps
to find some reason why life should so continually insist on being a
different thing from her imaginings of it.
Lighted by the hot sun, blown upon by the dust, her figure, tall,
thin, swaying a little in its many reflections, had the determined
valour of some Joan of Arc. But Joan of Arc, I thought to myself, had
at least some one definite against whom to wave her white banner; we
were fighting dust and the sun.
Trenchard and Nikitin had left us to go into the town to search for
news. We were silent. Suddenly Marie Ivanovna, turning upon us all as
though she hated us, cried fiercely:
"I think you should know that Mr. Trenchard and I are no longer
engaged."
It was neither the time nor the place for such a declaration. I cannot
suggest why Marie Ivanovna spoke unless it were that she felt life
that was betraying her so basely that she, herself, at least, must be
honest.
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