184 B- POLEVOI wrote, and requested her to cease writing about her feel- ings towards him until she had seen with her own eyes whom it wTas she loved. On reading this, Anyuta first felt indignant and then frightened. She took the photograph from her pocket. A thin, youthful face with determined features, a fine, straight nose, a small moustache and a nicely shaped mouth looked at her. "And now? What are you like now, my poor darling?" she whispered, gazing at the photograph. As a medical student, she was aware that burns heal badly and leave deep, indelible scars. For some reason, she recalled that in the anatomical museum she had seen a model of the face of a man who had suffered from lupus: a face scarred by bluish furrows and pimples, with ir- regular, corroded lips, eyebrows in small clumps, and red eyelids without eyelashes. What if he were like that? Her face paled with horror at the thought; but at once she mentally scolded herself. Well, suppose he is? He fought our enemies in a burning tank, defending her freedom, her right to education, her honour, her life. He was a hero. He had risked his life so many times and was now yearning to return to the front to fight and to risk his life again. But what had she done in the war? She had dug trenches, performed air defence duty and was work- ing in a base hospital. But what was this compared with what he had done? "These doubts alone make me un- worthy of him!" she railed at herself, making an effort to drive away the frightful vision of that mutilated face that rose before her eyes. She wrote him a letter, the longest and tenderest she had written throughout their correspondence. Naturally, Gvozdev never learned about these doubts. On receiving this splendid letter in answer to the anxious one that he had written, he read it over and over again. He even told Struchkov about it, and the latter, after listening to the story with an indulgent air, said: "Show your pluck, man. You know the saying: 'A pretty face and a heart that's cold; a plain one and a heart of gold.' All the more so today, when men are so scarce." Naturally, this candour failed to reassure Gvozdev. As the day of his discharge from hospital