“Always thinking of his stomach!” muttered the judge.

“’But he has gone on, and I can’t feel distressed, even though I know it is probable he will never come back.  I know it won’t make any difference in the real plan, and that it is only important that he keep on being a fighting so-and-so, as they say in the Army.  It is not that I am callous, but I have come to get a larger view of death—­mere death.  I said good-bye to him for probably the last time with as little feeling as I would have said good-bye to Father on departing for a three-days’ trip to the city.’”

“Naturally she’d forget her parents,” said the judge.  “That’s what it leads to.”

* * * * *

Late in June of that year the shattered remains of a small town somewhere in France, long peaceful with the peace of death, became noisy with a strange new life.  Two opposing and frenzied lines of traffic clashed along the road that led through it and became a noisy jumble in the little square at its centre, a disordered mass of camions, artillery, heavy supply wagons, field kitchens, ambulances, with motorcycles at its edges like excited terriers, lending a staccato vivacity to its uproar.

Artillery and soldiers went forward; supply wagons, empty, and ambulances, not empty, poured back in unending succession; and only the marching men, gaunt shapes in the dust, were silent.  They came from a road to the south, an undulating double line of silent men in dust-grayed khaki, bent under a burden of field equipment, stepping swiftly along the narrow, stone-paved street, heads down, unheeding the jagged ruin of small shops and dwellings that flanked the way.  Reaching the square, they turned to cross a makeshift bridge—­beside one of stone that had spanned the little river but now lay broken in its shallow bed.  Beyond this stream they followed a white road that wound gently up a sere hill between rows of blasted poplars.  At the top of the rise two shining lines of helmets undulated rhythmically below the view.

At moments the undulations would cease and the lines dissolve.  The opposing streams of traffic would merge in a tangle beyond extrication until a halt enabled each to go its way.  A sun-shot mist of fine dust softened all lines until from a little distance the figures of men and horses and vehicles were but twisting, yellowish phantoms, strangely troubled, strangely roaring.

At these times the lines of marching men, halted by some clumsy clashing of war machines, instantly became mere huddles of fatigue by the wayside, falling to earth like rows of standing blocks sent over by a child’s touch.

Facing the square was a small stone church that had been mistreated.  Its front was barred by tumbled masonry, but a well-placed shell had widely breached its side wall.  Through this timbered opening could be seen rows of cots hovered over by nurses or white-clad surgeons.  Their forms flashed with a subdued radiance far back in the shaded interior.  Litter bearers came and went.