Mammy rose in the morning just as usual during those interminable months. I was accustomed to calling Alexander Alexandrovitch's mother "mammy." She always wore a dark dress and carried a large white handkerchief which she continually raised to her lips. It was bright and cheerful in the dining-room. The tea-service stood on the table and the samovar was boiling. The room always made me feel that we were going away—into the country, for all the pictures had been taken down, and a mirror that had been hung on the walls was now in a sheet. I generally rise very early, say my prayers, and immediately look at the newspapers. I scarcely even thought of them and was quite indifferent to their contents; now I cannot even imagine life without them! By the time my morning cup of tea is brought, I have already read all the news of the world, and I tell it to Mammy, who cannot read the papers herself.  
She has the room Alexander Alexandrovitch formerly occupied; she is tall, always dresses in black, and there is a certain severity about her general demeanour. This is quite natural. She invariably makes the sign of the Cross over me, kisses me on the forehead and lips, and then—as ever—turns quickly away, bringing her handkerchief to her lips. I know, though, what it is that her—it is that Georgie is killed, and Alexander Alexandrovitch is still "Out there" . . . and that I, Anna, alone am left to her of her family.
 
We are always silent at tea: we generally are at all times. She asks only a single question:
 
"What is in the newspapers?"
 
She always utters it in a voice, and very excitedly and clumsily I tell her all I know. After breakfast I walk about outside the window looking at the old factory and awaiting the postman's arrival.
 
Thus I pass my days one by one, watching for the post, for the newspapers, enduring the mother's grief—and my own. And whenever I wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by a wounded subaltern at an point. He had sustained a slight head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering from shell-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and wearing a white bandage. I offered him tea, but he would not take it; pushing aside the mug and gripping my hand he said:
 
"Do you know what war is? Don't laugh! bayonets … do you understand?"—his voice rose in a shriek—"… into bayonets … that is, to cut, to kill, to one another—men! They turned the machine-guns on us, and this is what happened: the private Kuzmin and I were together, when suddenly two bullets struck him. He fell, and, losing all sense of distinction, forgetting that I was his officer, he stretched out his arms towards me in a sort of half-conscious way, and cried: 'Towny, bayonet me!' You understand? 'Towny, bayonet me!' But you cannot understand…. Do not laugh!"
 
He told me this, now whispering, now . He told me that I could not understand; but I can . . . "Towny, bayonet me!" Those words express all the terror of war for me—Georgie's death, Alexander's wound, the mother's grief; all, all that the War has brought: the............