Some one cried "Cheers for our host and hostess!"
We gave them, and in no half measure. We shouted. Boris Grogoff cried,
"More cheers!"
It was then that I saw Markovitch's face that had been puckered with
pleasure like the face of a delighted child suddenly stiffen, his hand
moved forward, then dropped. I turned and found, standing in the
doorway, quietly watching us, Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov.
XIII
I stared at him. I could not take my eyes away. I instantly forgot every
one else, the room, the tree, the lights.... With a force, with a
poignancy and pathos and brutality that were more cruel than I could
have believed possible that other world came back to me. Ah! I could see
now that all these months I had been running away from this very thing,
seeking to pretend that it did not exist, that it had never existed. All
in vain--utterly in vain. I saw Semyonov as I had just seen him, sitting
on his horse outside the shining white house at O----. Then Semyonov
operating in a stinking room, under a red light, his arms bathed in
blood; then Semyonov and Trenchard; then Semyonov speaking to Marie
Ivanovna, her eyes searching his face; then that day when I woke from my
dream in the orchard to find his eyes staring at me through the bright
green trees, and afterwards when we went in to look at her dead; then
worst of all that ride back to the "Stab" with my hand on his thick,
throbbing arm.
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