I often wondered what he was doing here, why he had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed with us when he, so openly, despised us all.

Until the arrival of Marie Ivanovna there was no answer to these questions--after that the answer was obvious enough.

Again, one could not hate a man of his sterling independence of character.

We were, all of us I think, emotionalists, of one kind or another, and went up and down in our feelings, alliances, severances, trusts and distrusts, as a thermometer goes up and down.

We were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not "a strong lot." Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come down from his dreams and see things as they were.
But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position.