complicated life. I no longer have the illusion which distorts and
conceals, that fervor, that sort of blind and unreasoning bravery which
tosses you from one hour to the next, and from day to day.

And yet I am just taking up life again where I left it. I am upright,
I am getting stronger and stronger. I am not ending, but beginning.

I slept profoundly, all alone in our bed.

Next morning, I saw Crillon, planted in the living-room downstairs. He
held out his arms, and shouted. After expressing good wishes, he
informs me, all in a breath:

"You don't know what's happened in the Town Council? Down yonder,
towards the place they call Little January, y'know, there's a steep
hill that gets wider as it goes down an' there's a gaslamp and a
watchman's box where all the cyclists that want to smash their faces,
and a few days ago now a navvy comes and sticks himself in there and no
one never knew his name, an' he got a cyclist on his head an' he's gone
dead. And against that gaslamp broken up by blows from cyclists they
proposed to put a notice-board, although all recommendations would be
superfluent. You catch on that it's nothing less than a maneuver to
get the mayor's shirt out?"

Crillon's words vanish. As fast as he utters them I detach myself from
all this poor old stuff. I cannot reply to him, when he has ceased,
and Marie and he are looking at me. I say, "Ah!"

He coughs, to keep me in countenance. Shortly, he takes himself off.

Others come, to talk of their affairs and the course of events in the
district. There is a regular buzz. So-and-so has been killed, but
So-and-so is made an officer. So-and-so has got a clerking job. Here
in the town, So-and-so has got rich. How's the War going on?

They surround me, with questioning faces. And yet it is I, still more
than they, who am one immense question.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XVIII

EYES THAT SEE

Two days have passed. I get up, dress myself, and open my shutters.
It is Sunday, as you can see in the street.

I put on my clothes of former days. I catch myself paying spruce
attention to my toilet, since it is Sunday, by reason of the compulsion
one feels to do the same things again.

And now I see how much my face has hollowed, as I compare it with the
one I had left behind in the familiar mirror.

I go out, and meet several people. Madame Piot asks me how many of the
enemy I have killed. I rep