s on the previous day, the fine weather had changed with the
night and a fine rain was falling. Doggie, an indistinguishable
pack-laden ant in the middle of the four-abreast ribbon of similar
pack-laden ants, tramped on in silence, thinking his own thoughts. A
regiment going back to the trenches in the night is, from the point of
view of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious
procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time poet. An
experienced regiment has no lovely illusions. It knows what it is
going to, and the knowledge makes it serious. It would much rather be
in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the rain to four days
and nights of eternal mud and stinking high-explosive shell. It sets
its teeth and is a very stern, silent, ugly conglomeration of men.

"---- (_the adjective_) night," growled Doggie's right-hand neighbour.

"---- (_the adjective_)" Doggie responded mechanically.

But to Doggie it was less "----" (_adjective as before_) than usual.
Jeanne's denunciation of self-pity had struck deep. Compared with her
calamities, half of which would have been the stock-in-trade of a
Greek dramatist wherewith to wring tears from mankind for a couple of
thousand years, what were his own piffling grievances? As for the
"----" night, instead of a drizzle he would have welcomed a
waterspout. Something that really mattered.... Let the heavens or the
Hun rain molten lead. Something that would put him on an equality with
Jeanne.... Jeanne, with her dark haunting eyes and mobile lips, and
her slim young figure and her splendid courage. A girl apart from the
girls he had known, apart from the women he had known, the women whom
he had imagined--and he had not imagined many--his training had
atrophied such imaginings of youth. Jeanne. Again her name conjured up
visions of the Great Jeanne of Domremy. If only he could have seen
her once again!

At the north end of the village the road took a sharp twist, skirting
a bit of rising ground. There was just a glimmer of a warning light
which streamed athwart the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie
wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that rang out clear:

"_Bonne chance!_"

He looked up swiftly. Caught the shadow of a shadow. But it was
enough. It was Jeanne. She had kept her promise. The men responded
incoherently, waving their hands, and Doggie's shout of "_Merci!_" was
lost. But though he knew, with a wonderful throbbing kn