His
passion, I thought, was as surely and as nakedly a physical one as any
other that I had seen precede it, and would as certainly pass as all
purely physical passions do. She was as ignorant of the world as on
the day when she arrived amongst us; but my feeling about her was that
she would receive his love almost as though in a dream, her thoughts
fixed on something far from him and in no way depending on him. At any
rate she was with him now continually. We judged her proud and
hard-hearted, all of us except Trenchard who loved her, Semyonov who
wanted her, and Nikitin, who, as I now believe, even then understood
her.
Trenchard meanwhile was confused and unsettled: inaction did not suit
him any better than it did the rest of us. He had too much time to
think about Marie Ivanovna.
He was undoubtedly pleased at his new popularity. He expanded under it
and became something of the loquacious and uncalculating person that
he had shown himself during his confession to me in the train.
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