And _in_ this Fortress it seemed to me that I, who was watching, outside the lives of these others, an observer only whom, perhaps, this same Fate despised, asked of God a sign.

I saw suddenly here the connexion, for which I had been waiting, between the four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and Trenchard--Two Wise Men and Two Fools--surely the rivalry was ludicrous in its inequality ...

and yet God does not judge as men do.
Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard?
Who would be taken and who left?
I recalled Semyonov's jesting words: "Even though it's the wise men succeed in this world I don't doubt it's the fools have their way in the next." I waited for my Sign....
Last of all I can hear it objected that every one was surely too busy to attend to relationships or shades of relationships.

But it was this very thing that contributed to the situation, namely, that, in the very stress of the work, there were hours, many hours, when there was simply nothing to be done.

Then if one could not sleep times were bad indeed.