half-closed eyes, breathing deep now
and then of the musty scent of Paris, that mingled with the melting
freshness of the wild strawberries on the plate before him.

As he stared in front of him two figures crossed his field of vision. A
woman swathed in black crepe veils was helping a soldier to a seat at
the next table. He found himself staring in a face, a face that still
had some of the chubbiness of boyhood. Between the pale-brown frightened
eyes, where the nose should have been, was a triangular black patch that
ended in some mechanical contrivance with shiny little black metal rods
that took the place of the jaw. He could not take his eyes from the
soldier's eyes, that were like those of a hurt animal, full of meek
dismay. Someone plucked at Martin's arm, and he turned suddenly,
fearfully.

A bent old woman was offering him flowers with a jerky curtsey.

"Just a rose, for good luck?"

"No, thank you."

"It will bring you happiness."

He took a couple of the reddest of the roses.

"Do you understand the language of flowers?"

"No."

"I shall teach you.... Thank you so much.... Thank you so much."

She added a few large daisies to the red roses in his hand.

"These will bring you love.... But another time I shall teach you the
language of flowers, the language of love."

She curtseyed again, and began making her way jerkily down the sidewalk,
jingling his silver in her hand.

He stuck the roses and daisies in the belt of his uniform and sat with
the green flame of Chartreuse in a little glass before him, staring into
the gardens, where the foliage was becoming blue and lavender with
evening, and the shadows darkened to grey-purple and black. Now and then
he glanced furtively, with shame, at the man at the next table. When the
restaurant closed he wandered through the unlighted streets towards the
river, listening to the laughs and conversations that bubbled like the
sparkle in Burgundy through the purple summer night.

But wherever he looked in the comradely faces of young men, in the
beckoning eyes of women, he saw the brown hurt eyes of the soldier, and
the triangular black patch where the nose should have been.

CHAPTER III

At Epernay the station was wrecked; the corrugated tin of the roof hung
in strips over the crumbled brick walls.

"They say the Boches came over last night. They killed a lot of
permissionaires."

"That river's the Marne."

"Gosh, is it? Let me get to the win