e any sign of understanding. "It's posted on the bulletin boards!" he
shouted, and advanced into the room like a weapon about to descend.

As a field of wheat catches fire stalk by stalk until the whole is in a
blaze, so we caught fire in our stupor, each spiked to the ground by his
own flame.

Fire! Fire! Moments of scarlet, strangled breathing, souls cowering in
bosoms, horror, too much horror already, wide-open eyes staring into
space....

I remember I had to lean against the wall, and other trifling incidents,
but my impotent dismay, my realization of all the folly let loose upon
the world no more come back to me than the taste of the first gulp of
life at birth.

I must have kept a clear brain and steady legs, because I ran straight
home.... What street, what hell, where was I?... I had no eyes for the
street nor ears for the humming in my head, nor consciousness even of
the daze that was driving me on.

We met in front of the house whose quiet walls still enclosed our
happiness. We passed under the porte-cochere heavily, passively, like
beasts driven to slaughter, and the staircase was an ascent to Calvary.
I do not think we exchanged a single word. When the door closed upon us
we embraced without kissing, and my cheek against his shoulder was wet
with tears that were not of my shedding.

It had occurred to me that he might leave for the war, but like every
other thought this one too was promptly chilled and crushed. Nor can I
say that it was the idea of his going that made me suffer the most. I
was stupefied beyond the power to suffer. I was just as ready to burst
out laughing or tear off my arms. I let myself be touched, handled, and
moved like a stone thrown into space. But contact with him restored me a
little, a very little, to the realization of what I was going to lose.

The days succeeding were spat from a volcano; nothing remains of them
but ashes. You learned new words; a whole language born of the moment
slipped from your tongue; countries became persons with distinct
individualities, gestures and features. You actually fed on what
appeared in the newspapers, picking up items like grains of manna. Men
alone counted--men, men. Life was in their hands, life and the fate of
the world. So and so many killed--abstractions with which the world
juggled in figures. Death, a human divinity after all, settled down
familiarly. Nothing was like anything that had gone before.

People began to talk of glory.