his cheeks and
neck. "She's so beautiful, she's--and me I'm--she's so unlike--you'll
have noticed it, surely, you that notices--she's a country girl, oui;
eh bien, she's got a God knows what that's better than a Parisienne,
even a toffed-up and stylish Parisienne, pas? She--as for me, I--"

He puckered his red eyebrows. He would have liked to tell me all the
splendor of his thoughts, but he knew not the art of expressing
himself, so he was silent. He remained alone in his voiceless emotion,
as always alone.

We went forward side by side between the rows of houses. In front of
the doors, drays laden with casks were drawn up. The front windows
blossomed with many-hued heaps of jam-pots, stacks of tinder
pipe-lighters--everything that the soldier is compelled to buy. Nearly
all the natives had gone into grocery. Business had been getting out of
gear locally for a long time, but now it was booming. Every one,
smitten with the fever of sum-totals and dazzled by the multiplication
table, plunged into trade.

Bells tolled, and the procession of a military funeral came out. A
forage wagon, driven by a transport man, carried a coffin wrapped in a
flag. Following, were a detachment of men, an adjutant, a padre, and a
civilian.

"The poor little funeral with its tail lopped off!" said Lamuse. "Ah,
those that are dead are very happy. But only sometimes, not
always--voila!"

We have passed the last of the houses. In the country, beyond the end
of the street, the fighting convoy and the regimental convoy have
settled themselves, the traveling kitchens and jingling carts that
follow them with odds and ends of equipment, the Red Cross wagons, the
motor lorries, the forage carts, the baggage-master's gig. The tents of
drivers and conductors swarm around the vehicles. On the open spaces
horses lift their metallic eyes to the sky's emptiness, with their feet
on barren earth. Four poilus are setting up a table. The open-air
smithy is smoking. This heterogeneous and swarming city, planted in
ruined fields whose straight or winding ruts are stiffening in the
heat, is already broadly valanced with rubbish and dung.

On the edge of the camp a big, white-painted van stands out from the
others in its tidy cleanliness. Had it been in the middle of a fair,
one would have said it was the stylish show where one pays more than at
the others.

This is the celebrated "stomatological" van that Blaire was asking
about. In point of fact, Blaire