in the flood of his passionate
revolt.

"Life is stupid," said the little doctor sententiously.

Suddenly from the lines came a splutter of machine-guns.

"Evensong!" cried the little doctor. "Ah, but here's business. You'd
better get your car ready, my friend."

The brancardiers set the stretcher down at the top of the steps that led
to the door of the dugout, so that Martin found himself looking into the
lean, sensitive face, stained a little with blood about the mouth, of
the wounded man. His eyes followed along the shapeless bundles of
blood-flecked uniform till they suddenly turned away. Where the middle
of the man had been, where had been the curved belly and the genitals,
where the thighs had joined with a strong swerving of muscles to the
trunk, was a depression, a hollow pool of blood, that glinted a little
in the cold diffusion of grey light from the west.

* * * * *

The rain beat hard on the window-panes of the little room and hissed
down the chimney into the smouldering fire that sent up thick green
smoke. At a plain oak table before the fireplace sat Martin Howe and Tom
Randolph, Tom Randolph with his sunburned hands with their dirty nails
spread flat and his head resting on the table between them, so that
Martin could see the stiff black hair on top of his head and the dark
nape of his neck going into shadow under the collar of the flannel
shirt.

"Oh, God, it's too damned absurd! An arrangement for mutual suicide and
no damned other thing," said Randolph, raising his head.

"A certain jolly asinine grotesqueness, though. I mean, if you were God
and could look at it like that ... Oh, Randy, why do they enjoy hatred
so?"

"A question of taste ... as the lady said when she kissed the cow."

"But it isn't. It isn't natural for people to hate that way, it can't
be. It even disgusts the perfectly stupid damn-fool people, like
Higgins, who believes that the Bible was written in God's own
handwriting and that the newspapers tell the truth."

"It makes me sick at ma stomach, Howe, to talk to one of those
hun-hatin' women, if they're male or female."

"It is a stupid affair, _la vie_, as the doctor at P.1. said
yesterday...."

"Hell, yes...."

They sat silent, watching the rain beat on the window, and run down in
sparkling finger-like streams.

"What I can't get over is these Frenchwomen." Randolph threw back his
head and laughed. "They're so bloody frank. Did I t