stions of general
interest and political news came first, but they might as well have
read the morning paper aloud. "The Crushing of the Huns," "The Triumph
of the Right," filled Clerambault's thoughts and speeches, while he
served as acolyte, and filled in the pauses with _cum spiritu tuo_.
All the time each was waiting for the other to begin to talk.

They waited so long that the end of his leave came. A little while
before he went, Maxime came into his father's study resolved to
explain himself:

"Papa, are you quite sure?" ...

The trouble painted on Clerambault's face checked the words on his
lips. He had pity on him and asked if his father was quite sure at
what time the train was to leave and Clerambault heard the end of the
question with an only too visible relief. When he had supplied all the
information--that Maxime did not listen to--he mounted his oratorical
hobby-horse again and started out with one of his habitual idealistic
declamations. Maxime held his peace, discouraged, and for the last
hour they spoke only of trifles. All but the mother felt that the
essential had not been uttered; only light and confident words, an
apparent excitement, but a deep sigh in the heart--"My God! my God!
why hast thou forsaken us?"

When Maxime left he was really glad to go back to the front. The gulf
that he had found between the front and rear seemed to him deeper than
the trenches, and guns did not appear to him as murderous as ideas.

As the railway carriage drew out of the station he leaned from the
window and followed with his eyes the tearful faces of his family
fading in the distance, and he thought:

"Poor dears, you are their victims and we are yours."

The day after his return to the front the great spring offensive was
let loose, which the talkative newspapers had announced to the enemy
several weeks beforehand. The hopes of the nation had been fed on it
during the gloomy winter of waiting and death, and it rose now, filled
with an impatient joy, sure of victory and crying out to it--"At
last!"

The first news seemed good; of course it spoke only of the enemy's
losses, and all faces brightened. Parents whose sons, women whose
husbands were "out there" were proud that their flesh and their love
had a part in this sanguinary feast; and in their exaltation they
hardly stopped to think that their dear one might be among the
victims. The excitement ran so high that Clerambault, an affectionate,
tend