ven a light in
the windows, but natural darkness; with the moon high overhead
throwing sharp shadows across the white cobble paving. The narrow
street made a bend, and he came out upon the church he and his
comrades had entered that afternoon. It looked larger by night,
and but for the sunken step, he might not have been sure it was
the same. The dark neighbouring houses seemed to lean toward it,
the moonlight shone silver-grey upon its battered front.

The two walking before him ascended the steps and withdrew into
the deep doorway, where they clung together in an embrace so long
and still that it was like death. At last they drew shuddering
apart. The girl sat down on the stone bench beside the door. The
soldier threw himself upon the pavement at her feet, and rested
his head on her knee, his one arm lying across her lap.

In the shadow of the houses opposite, Claude kept watch like a
sentinel, ready to take their part if any alarm should startle
them. The girl bent over her soldier, stroking his head so softly
that she might have been putting him to sleep; took his one hand
and held it against her bosom as if to stop the pain there. Just
behind her, on the sculptured portal, some old bishop, with a
pointed cap and a broken crozier, stood, holding up two fingers.

III

The next morning when Claude arrived at the hospital to see
Fanning, he found every one too busy to take account of him. The
courtyard was full of ambulances, and a long line of camions
waited outside the gate. A train-load of wounded Americans had
come in, sent back from evacuation hospitals to await
transportation home.

As the men were carried past him, he thought they looked as if
they had been sick a long while--looked, indeed, as if they could
never get well. The boys who died on board the Anchises had never
seemed as sick as these did. Their skin was yellow or purple,
their eyes were sunken, their lips sore. Everything that belonged
to health had left them, every attribute of youth was gone. One
poor fellow, whose face and trunk were wrapped in cotton, never
stopped moaning, and as he was carried up the corridor he smelled
horribly. The Texas orderly remarked to Claude, "In the beginning
that one only had a finger blown off; would you believe it?"

These were the first wounded men Claude had seen. To shed bright
blood, to wear the red badge of courage,--that was one thing; but
to be reduced to this was quite another. Surely, the soon