The Subaltern had entertained fond hopes that owing to his recent unusually long hours of sleep he would not be attacked by the same nauseating sensations of fatigue; but his hopes were vain.  The sleep seemed to have made things worse.  A little rest had developed an overwhelming desire for more, and he felt worse than ever.

He longed as he had never longed before for long cool drinks and clean white sheets.  He imagined himself at home.  What would he do?  He pictured himself in the bathroom eagerly peeling off his puttees as the water splashed into the pale blue bath.  How he would wallow in it!  He could feel how the water would caress his body, tepid and soothing.

On the table in the dining-room, green and cool with its view of the sombre pine wood, stood a long cold drink of what?  Cider, perhaps, or lime-juice and soda, something you could drink and drink and drink.  Last of all—­culminating pleasure of heaven—­his red bedroom, with the sheets ready turned down for him, soft and white and alluring.  That would have been heaven.

But this heaven of his was very far away from the hard dusty road and the eternal poplars!  With a painful jolt his thoughts would return to the realities of life; he would feel dazed and annoyed, and in his heart of hearts he wanted to cry.

* * * * *

Sir Archibald Murray passed in a car, holding an animated conversation with a much-beribboned and distinguished-looking French General.  He looked very pleased with himself, as well he might, for the greatest work of his career had begun the day before with astounding success.

The Subaltern must have felt very tired and dissatisfied that afternoon.  Having exhausted the painful thoughts of home, he began to tell himself what an awful life Active Service was.  It never occurred to him to be thankful that a youth so young should have the luck to play his part in such tremendous events.  He did not at the time realise that there were thousands of adventurous souls at home who would have given an arm to have been where he had been.

He did not realise that in after days the memory of every weary hour of trudging, of every bullet that had hummed by, and of every shell that had burst, would be a joy for ever.  The thought had never struck any of them, unsentimental souls!

At this point his memory confessedly breaks down.  He remembers perfectly a certain “ten minutes’ halt” spent in the shade of a sheaf of corn.  He remembers plunging into a pine forest; but thenceforward there is a blank.  His memory snaps.  He cannot recollect passing through that wood, much less passing out of it.  A link in the chain of his memory must have snapped.

When next he recollects anything clearly it may have been that night, the next night, or the night after that.  Anyway, it was very dark, and the Battalion was eventually halted in an open field.  Somehow or other, straw was procured for the rest, but his own Platoon was sent forward to hold an outpost position along the banks of a small stream.