Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/118

 things so much all in a bunch.... It's only when you get leave, and after you come back--it's bad, nothing goes right any more. You ought to have seen the little Sergeant that last time."

Clerambault felt a pang as he said quickly:

"When he came back?"

"He was very low. I don't know as I ever saw him so bad before."

An agonised expression came over Clerambault's face, and at his gesture, the wounded man who had been looking at the ceiling while he talked, turned his eyes and understood, for he added at once:

"He pulled himself together again, after that."

"Tell me what he said to you, tell me everything," said Clerambault again taking his hand.

The sick man hesitated and answered.

"I don't think I just remember what he said." Then he shut his eyes, and lay still, while Clerambault bent over him and tried to see what was before those eyes under their closed lids.

*      *       *       *       *

An icy moonless night. From the bottom of the hollow _boyau_ one could see the cold sky and the fixed stars. Bullets rattled on the hard ground. Maxime and his friend sat huddled up in the trench, smoking with their chins on their knees. The lad had come back that day from Paris. He was depressed, would not answer questions, shut himself up in a sulky silence. The other had left him all the afternoon to bear his trouble alone. Now here in the darkness he felt that the moment had come, and sat a little closer, for he knew that the boy would speak of his own accord. A bullet over their heads glanced off, knocking down a lump of frozen turf.

"Hullo, old gravedigger," said the other, "don't get too fresh."