same glance where the Lake of Thau, which
is green like glass, joins hands with the Mediterranean Sea, which is
azure; and sometimes one can make out as well, in the depths of the
indigo sky, the carven phantoms of the Pyrenees.

There was he born, there he grew up, happy and free. There he played,
on the golden or ruddy ground; played--even--at soldiers. The eager joy
of wielding a wooden saber flushed the cheeks now sunken and seamed. He
opens his eyes, looks about him, shakes his head, and falls upon regret
for the days when glory and war to him were pure, lofty, and sunny
things.

The man puts his hand over his eyes, to retain the vision within.
Nowadays, it is different.

It was up there in the same place, later, that he came to know
Clemence. She was just passing, the first time, sumptuous with
sunshine, and so fair that the loose sheaf of straw she carried in her
arms seemed to him nut-brown by contrast. The second time, she had a
friend with her, and they both stopped to watch him. He heard them
whispering, and turned towards them. Seeing themselves discovered, the
two young women made off, with a sibilance of skirts, and giggles like
the cry of a partridge.

And it was there, too, that he and she together set up their home. Over
its front travels a vine, which he coddled under a straw hat, whatever
the season. By the garden gate stands the rose-tree that he knows so
well--it never used its thorns except to try to hold him back a little
as he went by.

Will he return again to it all? Ah, he has looked too deeply into the
profundity of the past not to see the future in appalling accuracy. He
thinks of the regiment, decimated at each shift; of the big knocks and
hard he has had and will have, of sickness, and of wear--

He gets up and snorts, as though to shake off what was and what will
be. He is back in the middle of the gloom, and is frozen and swept by
the wind, among the scattered and dejected men who blindly await the
evening. He is back in the present, and he is shivering still.

Two paces of his long legs make him butt into a group that is
talking--by way of diversion or consolation--of good cheer.

"At my place," says one, "they make enormous loaves, round ones, big as
cart-wheels they are!" And the man amuses himself by opening his eyes
wide, so that he can see the loaves of the homeland.

"Where I come from," interposes the poor Southerner, "holiday feasts
last so long that the bread that's n