and trees ended, and between him and
the shrivelled green current was much sandy foreshore, for summer was at
height, and the snows had long finished melting and passing down. The
burning sun had sucked up all moisture, the earth was parched, but
to-day a cool breeze blew, willow and aspen leaves were fluttering and
hissing as if millions of tiny kisses were being given up there; and a
few swathes of white cloud were drawn, it seemed--not driven--along the
blue. The soldier Jean Liotard had fixed his eyes on the ground, where
was nothing to see but a few dry herbs. He had "_cafard_," for he was
due to leave the hospital to-morrow and go up before the military
authorities, for "_prolongation_." There he would answer perfunctory
questions, and be told at once: _Au depot_; or have to lie naked before
them that some "_major_" might prod his ribs, to find out whether his
heart, displaced by shell-shock, had gone back sufficiently to normal
position. He had received one "_prolongation_," and so, wherever his
heart now was, he felt sure he would not get another. "_Au depot_" was
the fate before him, fixed as that river flowing down to its death in
the sea. He had "_cafard_"--the little black beetle in the brain, which
gnaws and eats and destroys all hope and heaven in a man. It had been
working at him all last week, and now he was at a monstrous depth of
evil and despair. To begin again the cursed barrack-round, the driven
life, until in a month perhaps, packed like bleating sheep, in the
troop-train, he made that journey to the fighting line again--"_A la
hachette--a la hachette!_"

He had stripped off his red flannel jacket, and lay with shirt opened to
the waist, to get the breeze against his heart. In his brown
good-looking face the hazel eyes, which in these three God-deserted
years had acquired a sort of startled gloom, stared out like a dog's,
rather prominent, seeing only the thoughts within him--thoughts and
images swirling round and round in a dark whirlpool, drawing his whole
being deeper and deeper. He was unconscious of all the summer hum and
rustle--the cooing of the dove up in that willow tree, the winged
enamelled fairies floating past, the chirr of the cicadas, that little
brown lizard among the pebbles, almost within reach, seeming to listen
to the beating of summer's heart so motionless it lay; unconscious, as
though in verity he were again deep in some stifling trench, with German
shells whining over him,