Page:The return of the soldier (IA returnofsoldier00west2).pdf/157

 trench; no more did I hear voices talking in a void: "Help me, old man; I've got no legs—" "I can't, old man; I've got no hands." They could not take him back to the army as he was. Only that morning as I went through the library he had raised an appalled face from the pages of a history of the war.

"Jenny, it can't be true that they did that to Belgium! Those funny, quiet, stingy people!" And his soldierly knowledge was as deeply buried as this memory of that awful August. While her spell endured they could not send him back into the hell of war. This wonderful, kind woman held his body as safely as she held his soul.

I was so grateful that I was forced to go and sit down on the rug beside her. It was an intrusion, but I wanted to be near her. She did not look surprised when she turned to me her puckered brows, but smiled through the ugly fringe of vagrant