keeper seemed to see a shadowy pageant sweep by--gaunt soldiers
with white faces, arming anew against the subtle product of peace: men
who said, "It was nothing! Behold, we saw it with our
eyes!"--stay-at-home eyes.

The third day the fever abated, and Ward De Rosset noticed his
surroundings. Old Pomp acknowledged that he had been moved, but veiled
the locality: "To a frien's house, Mars' Ward."

"But I have no friends now, Pomp," said the weak voice.

Pomp was very much amused at the absurdity of this. "No frien's! Mars'
Ward, no frien's!" He was obliged to go out of the room to hide his
laughter. The sick man lay feebly thinking that the bed was cool and
fresh, and the closed green blinds pleasant; his thin fingers stroked
the linen sheet, and his eyes wandered from object to object. The only
thing that broke the rule of bare utility in the simple room was a
square of white drawing-paper on the wall, upon which was inscribed in
ornamental text the following verse:

"Toujours femme varie,
Bien fou qui s'y fie;
Une femme souvent
N'est qu'une plume au vent."

With the persistency of illness the eyes and mind of Ward De Rosset went
over and over this distich; he knew something of French, but was unequal
to the effort of translating; the rhymes alone caught his vagrant
fancy. "Toujours femme varie," he said to himself over and over again;
and when the keeper entered, he said it to him.

"Certainly," answered the keeper; "bien fou qui s'y fie. How do you find
yourself this morning?"

"I have not found myself at all, so far. Is this your house?"

"Yes."

"Pomp told me I was in a friend's house," observed the sick man,
vaguely.

"Well, it isn't an enemy's. Had any breakfast? No? Better not talk,
then."

He went to the detached shed which served for a kitchen, upset all
Pomp's clumsy arrangements, and ordered him outside; then he set to work
and prepared a delicate breakfast with his best skill. The sick man
eagerly eyed the tray as he entered. "Better have your hands and face
sponged off, I think," said Rodman; and then he propped him up
skillfully, and left him to his repast. The grass needed mowing on the
parade-ground; he shouldered his scythe and started down the path,
viciously kicking the gravel aside as he walked. "Wasn't solitude your
principal idea, John Rodman, when you applied for this place?" he
demanded of himself. "How much of it are you likely to have with sick
men, and sick