se my self-control. It was so
unlike him, so utterly unlike him, to do that. I trembled a little,
then steadied myself, and we walked together into the house. They must
all instantly have known what had occurred because I heard running
steps and sharp anxious voices.

I felt desperately, as a man runs when he is afraid, that I must be
alone. I slipped away into the passage that leads from the hall. This
passage was quite dark and I was feeling my direction with my hands
when some one, carrying a candle, turned the corner. It was
Trenchard. He raised the candle high to look at me.

"Hallo, Durward," he cried. "You're back. What sort of a time?..."

I told him at once what had occurred. The candle dropped from his
hand, falling with a sharp clatter. There was a horrible pause, both
of us standing there close to one another in the sudden blackness. I
could hear his fast nervous breathing. I was myself unstrung I
suppose, because I remember that I was dreadfully afraid lest
Trenchard should do something to me, there, as we stood.

I felt his hand groping on my clothes. But he was only feeling his
way. I heard his steps, creeping, stumbling down the passage. Once I
thought that he had fallen.

Then there was silence, and at last I was alone.

CHAPTER III

THE FOREST

And now I am confronted with a very serious difficulty. There is
nothing stranger in this whole business of the life and character of
war than the fashion in which an atmosphere that has been of the
intensest character can, by the mere advance or retreat of a pace or
two, disappear, close in upon itself, present the blindest front to
the soul that has, a moment before, penetrated it. It is as though one
had visited a house for the first time. The interior is of the most
absorbing and unique interest. There are revealed in it beauties,
terrors, of so sharp a reality that one believes that one's life is
changed for ever by the sight of them. One passes the door, closes it
behind one, steps into the outer world, looks back, and there is only
before one's view a thick cold wall--the windows are dead, there is no
sound, only bland, dull, expressionless space. Moreover this dull
wall, almost instantly, persuades one of the incredibility of what one
has seen. There were no beauties, there were no terrors.... Ordinary
life closes round one, trivial things reassume their old importance,
one disbelieves in fantastic dreams.

I believe that every one wh