y he was obsessed by
thoughts of it. Sidi-bel-Abbes, which at first had struck him as being a
dull provincial town, now seemed the only place where he could have
lived through his dark hours. Elsewhere he would have felt surrounded by
a gay and happy world in which a man with his back to the wall had no
place. Here at Sidi-bel-Abbes was the home of men with their backs to
the wall. The very town itself had been created by such men, and for
them. For generations desperate men, sad men, starving men, of all
countries--men who had lost everything but life and strength--had been
turning their faces toward Sidi-bel-Abbes, their sole luggage the secret
sorrow which, once the _Legion_ had taken them, was no one's business
but their own.

Max Doran could not go into the street without meeting at least a dozen
men in the Legion's uniform, who seemed akin to him because of the look
in their eyes; the look of those cut off from what had once meant life
and love. What they were enduring was unknown to him, but he was somehow
at home among them. And the day Josephine went away, before he had yet
made up his mind to the next step, for the first time he heard the music
of the Legion's band.

It was in the afternoon, and he had strolled outside the Porte de
Tlemcen into the public gardens for the music, only because he had an
hour to pass before his appointment in the Salle d'Honneur. In winter
the band played in the Place Carnot, but on this soft day of early
spring the concert was announced for the gardens beloved by the people
of Sidi-bel-Abbes. They were beautiful, but to Max it seemed the beauty
of sadness; and even there, outside the wall which dead Legionnaires had
built, everything spoke of the Legion. Men of the Legion had planted
many of the tall trees of the cloistral avenue, whose columnar trunks
were darkly draped with ivy. Men of the Legion swept dead leaves from
the paths, as they swept away old memories. Men of the Legion walked in
the gray shadow of the planes, as they walked in the shadows of life.
Men of the Legion rested on the rough wooden benches, staring absently
at mourning plumes of cypresses, or white waterfalls that fleeted by
like lost opportunities. Yes, despite the flowers in the myrtle borders
it was a place of sadness, and of a mournful silence until the musicians
brought their instruments into the curious bandstand formed of growing
trees. Then it seemed to Max that he heard the Legion speak in a great