Page:The Return of the Soldier (Van Druten).djvu/91

 : Gives us fortitude to bear our trials! Who cares whether we bear them or not? Listen, Frank. I had a dream the other night. I used to dream of Chris in France all the horrors I’d ever heard or read about  but this was something different. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream perhaps it was a vision  a revelation. It was out in France, somewhere behind the lines, in a wrecked village with a church that had no tower left, and a few houses and shops filthy, tumbledown places, and dirty, bare-armed, slouchy women sitting at their doors. And in one of the shops was Chris, standing talking across a counter to an old man in a blouse—an old man with a scar running into his beard, and smiling a curious smile, lewd and yet benevolent  somehow complete  like the soul of the universe smiling, knowing everything and disregarding everything  seeing me and seeing the slouchy woman at her door  and seeing both of us alike  equally important  or unimportant. And Chris was leaning against the counter with his eyes glazed. It was his spirit not his body. That lay rotting out there in the mud. He was looking at two crystals that the old man was showing him looking into them. In one of them was Margaret oh, not as we see her in her raincoat and that awful hat, but transfigured  eternal. And