“I went by with my neck twisted sideways.  There were heads of men and women with a rosy light on them, round the round table and the lamp.  My eyes fell on her, on Clotilde.  I saw her plainly.  She was sitting between two chaps, non-coms., I believe, and they were talking to her.  And what was she doing?  Nothing; she was smiling, and her face was prettily bent forward and surrounded with a light little framework of fair hair, and the lamp gave it a bit of a golden look.

“She was smiling.  She was contented.  She had a look of being well off, by the side of the Boche officer, and the lamp, and the fire that puffed an unfamiliar warmth out on me.  I passed, and then I turned round, and passed again.  I saw her again, and she was always smiling.  Not a forced smile, not a debtor’s smile, non, a real smile that came from her, that she gave.  And during that time of illumination that I passed in two senses, I could see my baby as well, stretching her hands out to a great striped simpleton and trying to climb on his knee; and then, just by, who do you think I recognized?  Madeleine Vandaert, Vandaert’s wife, my pal of the 19th, that was killed at the Maine, at Montyon.

“She knew he’d been killed because she was in mourning.  And she, she was having good fun, and laughing outright, I tell you—­and she looked at one and the other as much as to say, ‘I’m all right here!’

“Ah, my boy, I cleared out of that, and butted into the Kamarads that were waiting to take me back.  How I got back I couldn’t tell you.  I was knocked out.  I went stumbling like a man under a curse, and if any-body had said a wrong word to me just then—!  I should have shouted out loud; I should have made a row, so as to get killed and be done with this filthy life!

“Do you catch on?  She was smiling, my wife, my Clotilde, at this time in the war!  And why?  Have we only got to be away for a time for us not to count any more?  You take your damned hook from home to go to the war, and everything seems finished with; and they worry for a while that you’re gone, but bit by bit you become as if you didn’t exist, they can do without you to be as happy as they were before, and to smile.  Ah, Christ!  I’m not talking of the other woman that was laughing, but my Clotilde, mine, who at that chance moment when I saw her, whatever you may say, was getting on damned well without me!

“And then, if she’d been with friends or relations; but no, actually with Boche officers!  Tell me, shouldn’t I have had good reason to jump into the room, fetch her a couple of swipes, and wring the neck of the other old hen in mourning?

“Yes, yes; I thought of doing it.  I know all right I was getting violent, I was getting out of control.

“Mark me.  I don’t want to say more about it than I have said.  She’s a good lass, Clotilde.  I know her, and I’ve confidence in her.  I’m not far wrong, you know.  If I were done in, she’d cry all the tears in her body to begin with.  She thinks I’m alive, I admit, but that isn’t the point.  She can’t prevent herself from being; well off, and contented, and letting herself go, when she’s a good fire, a good lamp, and company, whether I’m there or not—­”