back. How I got back I couldn't tell you. I was
knocked out. I went stumbling like a man under a curse, and if any-body
had said a wrong word to me just then--! I should have shouted out
loud; I should have made a row, so as to get killed and be done with
this filthy life!

"Do you catch on? She was smiling, my wife, my Clotilde, at this time
in the war! And why? Have we only got to be away for a time for us not
to count any more? You take your damned hook from home to go to the
war, and everything seems finished with; and they worry for a while
that you're gone, but bit by bit you become as if you didn't exist,
they can do without you to be as happy as they were before, and to
smile. Ah, Christ! I'm not talking of the other woman that was
laughing, but my Clotilde, mine, who at that chance moment when I saw
her, whatever you may say, was getting on damned well without me!

"And then, if she'd been with friends or relations; but no, actually
with Boche officers! Tell me, shouldn't I have had good reason to jump
into the room, fetch her a couple of swipes, and wring the neck of the
other old hen in mourning?

"Yes, yes; I thought of doing it. I know all right I was getting
violent, I was getting out of control.

"Mark me. I don't want to say more about it than I have said. She's a
good lass, Clotilde. I know her, and I've confidence in her. I'm not
far wrong, you know. If I were done in, she'd cry all the tears in her
body to begin with. She thinks I'm alive, I admit, but that isn't the
point. She can't prevent herself from being; well off, and contented,
and letting herself go, when she's a good fire, a good lamp, and
company, whether I'm there or not--"

I led Poterloo away: "You exaggerate, old chap; you're getting absurd
notions, come." We had walked very slowly and were still at the foot of
the hill. The fog was becoming like silver as it prepared for
departure. Sunshine was very near.

* * * * *

Poterloo looked up and said, "We'll go round by the Carency road and go
in at the back." We struck off at an angle into the fields. At the end
of a few minutes he said to me, "I exaggerate, you think? You say that
I exaggerate?" He reflected. "Ah!" Then he added, with the shaking of
the head that had hardly left him all the morning, "What about it? All
the same, it's a fact--"

We climbed the slope. The cold had become tepidity. Arrived on a little
plateau--"Let's sit here again before