ck against the boulder, and he threw one of
the, chestnuts lightly into the air. "Oh, one violinist more or
less doesn't matter! But who is ever going back to anything?
That's what I want to know!"

Claude felt guilty; as if David must have guessed what apostasy
had been going on in his own mind this afternoon. "You don't
believe we are going to get out of this war what we went in for,
do you?" he asked suddenly.

"Absolutely not," the other replied with cool indifference.

"Then I certainly don't see what you're here for!"

"Because in 1917 I was twenty-four years old, and able to bear
arms. The war was put up to our generation. I don't know what
for; the sins of our fathers, probably. Certainly not to make the
world safe for Democracy, or any rhetoric of that sort. When I
was doing stretcher work, I had to tell myself over and over that
nothing would come of it, but that it had to be. Sometimes,
though, I think something must.... Nothing we expect, but
something unforeseen." He paused and shut his eyes. "You remember
in the old mythology tales how, when the sons of the gods were
born, the mothers always died in agony? Maybe it's only Semele
I'm thinking of. At any rate, I've sometimes wondered whether the
young men of our time had to die to bring a new idea into the
world... something Olympian. I'd like to know. I think I shall
know. Since I've been over here this time, I've come to believe
in immortality. Do you?"

Claude was confused by this quiet question. "I hardly know. I've
never been able to make up my mind."

"Oh, don't bother about it! If it comes to you, it comes. You
don't have to go after it. I arrived at it in quite the same way
I used to get things in art,--knowing them and living on them
before I understood them. Such ideas used to seem childish to
me." Gerhardt sprang up. "Now, have I told you what you want to
know about my case?" He looked down at Claude with a curious
glimmer of amusement and affection. "I'm going to stretch my
legs. It's four o'clock."

He disappeared among the red pine stems, where the sunlight made
a rose-colored lake, as it used to do in the summer... as it
would do in all the years to come, when they were not there to
see it, Claude was thinking. He pulled his hat over his eyes and
went to sleep.

The little girl on the edge of the beech wood left her sack and
stole quietly down the hill. Sitting in the heather and drawing
her feet up under her, she stayed still for