had told him about some caves at the other end of the wood, underground chambers where the country people had gone to live in times of great misery, long ago, in the English wars.  The English wars; he could not remember just how far back they were,—­but long enough to make one feel comfortable.  As for him, perhaps he would never go home at all.  Perhaps, when this great affair was over, he would buy a little farm and stay here for the rest of his life.  That was a project he liked to play with.  There was no chance for the kind of life he wanted at home, where people were always buying and selling, building and pulling down.  He had begun to believe that the Americans were a people of shallow emotions.  That was the way Gerhardt had put it once; and if it was true, there was no cure for it.  Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.  While he was absorbed in his day dream of farming in France, his companion stirred and rolled over on his elbow.

“You know we are to join the Battalion at A—.  They’ll be living like kings there.  Hicks will get so fat he’ll drop over on the march.  Headquarters must have something particularly nasty in mind; the infantry is always fed up before a slaughter.  But I’ve been thinking; I have some old friends at A—.  Suppose we go on there a day early, and get them to take us in?  It’s a fine old place, and I ought to go to see them.  The son was a fellow student of mine at the Conservatoire.  He was killed the second winter of the war.  I used to go up there for the holidays with him; I would like to see his mother and sister again.  You’ve no objection?”

Claude did not answer at once.  He lay squinting off at the beech trees, without moving.  “You always avoid that subject with me, don’t you?” he said presently.

“What subject?”

“Oh, anything to do with the Conservatoire, or your profession.”

“I haven’t any profession at present.  I’ll never go back to the violin.”

“You mean you couldn’t make up for the time you’ll lose?”

Gerhardt settled his back against a rock and got out his pipe.  “That would be difficult; but other things would be harder.  I’ve lost much more than time.”

“Couldn’t you have got exemption, one way or another?”

“I might have.  My friends wanted to take it up and make a test case of me.  But I couldn’t stand for it.  I didn’t feel I was a good enough violinist to admit that I wasn’t a man.  I often wish I had been in Paris that summer when the war broke out; then I would have gone into the French army on the first impulse, with the other students, and it would have been better.”