Although there is
no more between them yet than promises and assurances, she is his, and
he is the man who will hold her in his arms.

Then, too, he is going to leave us, called to the rear, to Brigade
H.Q., where they want a weakling who can work a typewriter. It is
official; it is in writing; he is saved. That gloomy future at which we
others dare not look is definite and bright for him.

He looks at an open window and the dark gap behind it of some room or
other over there, a shadowy room that bemuses him. His life is twofold
in hope; he is happy, for the imminent happiness that does not yet
exist is the only real happiness down here.

So a scanty spirit of envy grows around him. "One never knows," murmurs
Paradis again, but with no more confidence than when before, in the
straitened scene of our life to-day, he uttered those immeasurable
words.

VII

Entraining

THE next day, Barque began to address us, and said: "I'll just explain
to you what it is. There are some i--"

A ferocious whistle cut his explanation off short, on the syllable. We
were in a railway station, on a platform. A night alarm had torn us
from our sleep in the village and we had marched here. The rest was
over; our sector was being changed; they were throwing us somewhere
else. We had disappeared from Gauchin under cover of darkness without
seeing either the place or the people, without bidding them good-by
even in a look, without bringing away a last impression.

A locomotive was shunting, near enough to elbow us, and screaming
full-lunged. I saw Barque's mouth, stoppered by the clamor of our huge
neighbor, pronounce an oath, and I saw the other faces grimacing in
deafened impotence, faces helmeted and chin-strapped, for we were
sentries in the station.

"After you!" yelled Barque furiously, addressing the white-plumed
whistle. But the terrible mechanism continued more imperiously than
ever to drive his words back in his throat. When it ceased, and only
its echo rang in our ears, the thread of the discourse was broken for
ever, and Barque contented himself with the brief conclusion, "Oui."

Then we looked around us. We were lost in a sort of town. Interminable
strings of trucks, trains of forty to sixty carriages, were taking
shape like rows of dark-fronted houses, low built, all alike, and
divided by alleys. Before us, alongside the collection of moving
houses, was the main line, the limitless street where the white rails