It is as though one
had visited a house for the first time. The interior is of the most
absorbing and unique interest. There are revealed in it beauties,
terrors, of so sharp a reality that one believes that one's life is
changed for ever by the sight of them. One passes the door, closes it
behind one, steps into the outer world, looks back, and there is only
before one's view a thick cold wall--the windows are dead, there is no
sound, only bland, dull, expressionless space. Moreover this dull
wall, almost instantly, persuades one of the incredibility of what one
has seen. There were no beauties, there were no terrors.... Ordinary
life closes round one, trivial things reassume their old importance,
one disbelieves in fantastic dreams.
I believe that every one who has had experience of war will admit the
truth of this. I had myself already known something of the kind and
had wondered at the fashion in which the crossing of a mere verst or
two can bring the old life about one. I had known it during the battle
of S----, in the days that followed the battle, in moments of the
Retreat, when for half an hour we would suddenly be laughing and
careless as though we were in Petrograd.
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