dier.
"But you are a hero," he cried. "Let me embrace you!"

The soldier drew back, shaking his head sadly. "No," he said, his voice
breaking--"no, my father, you must not embrace me now. I may have been
a brave man once. But now I am a coward. Let me tell you everything. My
wounds were bad, but not desperate. The _brancardiers_ carried me down
to Verdun, at night, I suppose, but I was unconscious; and so to the
hospital at Vaudelaincourt. There were days and nights of blankness
mixed with pain. Then I came to my senses and had rest. It was
wonderful. I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. Would God it
had been so! Then I should have been with my lieutenant. They told me
he had passed away in the redoubt. But that hospital was beautiful, so
clean and quiet and friendly. Those white nurses were angels. They
handled me like a baby. I would have liked to stay there. I had no
desire to get better. But I did. One day several officers visited the
hospital. They came to my cot, where I was sitting up. The highest of
them brought out a Cross of War and pinned it on the breast of my
nightshirt. 'There,' he said, 'you are decorated, Pierre Duval! You are
one of the heroes of France. You are soon going to be perfectly well
and to fight again bravely for your country.' I thanked him, but I knew
better. My body might get perfectly well, but something in my soul was
broken. It was worn out. The thin spring had snapped. I could never
fight again. Any loud noise made me shake all over. I knew that I could
never face a battle--impossible! I should certainly lose my nerve and
run away. It is a damned feeling, that broken something inside of one.
I can't describe it."

Pierre stopped for a moment and moistened his dry lips with the tip of
his tongue.

"I know," said Father Courcy. "I understand perfectly what you want to
say. It was like being lost and thinking that nothing could save you; a
feeling that is piercing and dull at the same time, like a heavy weight
pressing on you with sharp stabs in it. It was what they call
shellshock, a terrible thing. Sometimes it drives men crazy for a
while. But the doctors know what to do for that malady. It passes. You
got over it."

"No," answered Pierre, "the doctors may not have known that I had it.
At all events, they did not know what to do for it. It did not pass. It
grew worse. But I hid it, talking very little, never telling anybody
how I felt. They said I was depressed and nee