Wandel laughed in a satisfied way.

"I'm always right about you, great man. Don't you see that? Never think
about your own citation----"

George stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Citation! A thousand citations for a bed!"

He watched Wandel uneasily when, at the heels of a guide, he dodged down
the slope in search of Lambert, calling back:

"Don't swallow any germs."

"That's very fine, Driggs," he thought, "but why all that and not the
rest? I'd give a good deal to guess what you know about me and Sylvia
Planter."

X

George hoped Wandel would find Lambert. Day by day he had dreaded bad
news. Other officers and men got hit every hour; why not himself or
Lambert? For he had never forgotten Mrs. Planter's unexpected and
revealing whisper. It had shown him that even beneath such exteriors
emotion lurks as raw, as desirous, as violent as a savage's. The rest,
then, was habit which people inherited, or acquired, or imitated with
varying success. It had made him admire her all the more, had forced on
him a wish to obey her, but what could he do? It was not in him to play
favourites. One man's life was as good as another's; but he watched
Lambert as he could, while in his tired brain lingered a feeling of fear
for that woman's son.

During the peaceful days dividing the Aisne and the Argonne he looked at
Lambert and fingered his own clothing, stained and torn where death had
nearly reached, with a wondering doubt that they could both be whole,
that Mrs. Planter in her unemotional way could still welcome guests to
Oakmont. And he recalled that impression he had shared with Sylvia on
the bluff above Lake Champlain of being suspended, but he no longer felt
free. He seemed to hang, indeed, helplessly, in a resounding silence
which at any moment would commence giving forth unbearable, Gargantuan
noises; for, bathed and comfortable, eating in leisure from a mess-kit,
he never forgot that this was a respite, that to-morrow or the next day
or the day after the sounding board would reverberate again, holding him
a deafened victim.

Wandel caught up with them one evening in the sylvan peace that preceded
the fatal forest uproar. The Argonne still slumbered; was nearly silent;
offered untouched trees under which to loaf after a palatable cold
supper. The brown figures of enlisted men also lounged near by,
reminiscing, wondering, doubtless, as these officers did, about New
York which had assumed the attributes of an unat