reach of my
eyes. And I saw the sky for the first time, and a gray yard as well,
where it was visibly cold, and a gray day, an ordinary day, like life,
like everything.

Quickly the days wiped each other out. Gradually I got up, in the
middle of the men who had relapsed into childhood, and were awkwardly
beginning again, or plaintively complaining in their beds. I have
strolled in the wards, and then along a path. It is a matter of
formalities now--convalescence, and in a month's time the Medical
Board.

At last Marie came one morning for me, to go home, for that interval.

She found me on the seat in the yard of the hospital, which used to be
a school, under the cloth--which was the only spot where a ray of
sunshine could get in. I was meditating in the middle of an assembly
of old cripples and men with heads or arms bandaged, with ragged and
incongruous equipment, with sick clothes. I detached myself from the
miracle-yard and followed Marie, after thanking the nurse and saying
good-by to her.

The corporal of the hospital orderlies is the vicar of our church--he
who said and who spread it about that he was going to share the
soldiers' sufferings, like all the priests. Marie says to me, "Aren't
you going to see him?"

"No," I say.

We set out for life by a shady path, and then the high road came. We
walked slowly. Marie carried the bundle. The horizons were even, the
earth was flat and made no noise, and the dome of the sky no longer
banged like a big clock. The fields were empty, right to the end,
because of the war; but the lines of the road were scriptural, turning
not aside to the right hand or to the left. And I, cleansed,
simplified, lucid--though still astonished at the silence and affected
by the peacefulness--I saw it all distinctly, without a veil, without
anything. It seemed to me that I bore within me a great new reason,
unused.

We were not far away. Soon we uncovered the past, step by step. As
fast as we drew near, smaller and smaller details introduced themselves
and told us their names--that tree with the stones round it, those
forsaken and declining sheds. I even found recollections shut up in
the little retreats of the kilometer-stones.

But Marie was looking at me with an indefinable expression.

"You're icy cold," she said to me suddenly, shivering.

"No," I said, "no."

We stopped at an inn to rest and eat, and it was already evening when
we reached the streets.