re as good as dead."

In the long silence that followed they could hear the scream of a
shell across the sky. Maxime's comrade blew out a mouthful of smoke.
"Well, youngster," he said, "it didn't go right, back there this time,
did it?--I guessed as much!"

"I don't know why."

"When one is hurt, and the other isn't, they haven't much to say to
one another."

"Oh, they suffer too."

"Not the same. You can't make a man know what a toothache is unless he
feels it. Can't be done. Go to them all snuggled up in their beds, and
make them understand how it is out here!... It's nothing new to me. I
didn't have to wait for the war. Always have lived like this. But do
you believe when I was working in the soil, sweating all the fat off
my bones, that any of them bothered their heads about me? I don't mean
that there's any harm in them, nor much good, either, but like anybody
else, they don't see how it is. To understand a thing properly you've
got to take hold of it yourself, take the work, and the hurt. If not,
and that's what it is, you know--might as well make up your mind--no
use trying to explain. That's the way things are, and we can't do
anything about it."

"Life would not be worth living, if it were as bad as that."

"Why not, by gosh? I've stuck it out all this time, and you're just
as good as me, better, because you've got more brains and can learn.
That's the way to get on, the harder it is the more it teaches you.
And then when you're together, like us here, and things are rocky,
it's not a pleasure, exactly, but it ain't all pain. The worst is to
be off by yourself; and you're not lonesome, are you, boy?" Maxime
looked him in the face, as he answered:

"I was back there, but I don't feel it here with you."

* * * * *

The man who lay on the bed said nothing of what had been passing
before his closed eyes. He turned them tranquilly on the father,
whose agonised look seemed to implore him to speak. And then, with an
awkward kindness, he tried to explain that if the boy was down-hearted
it was probably because he had just left home, but _they_ had cheered
him up as well as they could; they knew how he felt. He had never
known what it was to have a father himself, but when he was a kid he
used to think what luck it would be to have one.... "So I thought I
might try. I spoke to him, Sir, like you would yourself,... and he
soon quieted down. He said, all the same, there was one