our part of the country. A fine beard ornamented and prolonged a face that was full of sweetness and life, such a face as one sees in the young men whose likenesses, with a ruff at the neck and a heavy chain of glittering gold shining over a doublet of dark velvet, have often and happily been represented by the Flemish painters.

A small bandage encircled his forehead. He seemed so little troubled by it that for some time I neglected to ask him about his wound. But, then, he himself thought nothing of it. On one occasion I saw his bandage changed, and he then explained to me in a few words how in a surprise attack a fragment of a grenade had struck him. He appeared to treat this incident with the most complete indifference.

"There is nothing to take me to the interior," he added, with a melancholy smile, "and I was planning to return at once to my company; but the doctor thought best formally to oppose my doing so."

He confessed that it was not without pleasure that he looked forward to completing his convalescence in this Château de S- which was taking on the splendid apparel of autumn.

After the second week and despite the gravity of my wound, which was in the shoulder, I was able to get up and take a few steps. Dauche helped me with a brotherly kindness, and it was due to his encouragement that I soon ventured into the avenues of the park.

"You are going out with Lieutenant Dauche?" the doctor who took care of us both said to me with some embarrassment. "Be careful not to go too far."

This doctor was a silent man. I did not ask him for more enlightenment; I had confidence in my newly found strength, and by a natural enough turn of the mind I assumed it was I who was the object of his professional solicitude.

Several days passed, days overflowing with all that ardor and eternal youth that attend the birth of a friendship. The war, among a thousand other miseries, has brought us the experience of living in the company of men whom in times of peace we should have carefully

I

avoided. So it was with a trembling joy that I recognized in Dauche those qualities which my nature, perhaps unreasonably troubled and hard to please, requires in order to feel affection. believe there is a deep predestination in this; the men of to-day who can become my friends are, all over the world, marked with the same mysterious sign, but I shall not know them all, and perhaps fate will never take the trouble to let me meet my best friend.

The hours when it did not rain I passed with Dauche in long conversations on the slopes of the hill, down which straggled a luxuriant grove of beeches and oaks. My young friend saw and judged the things of nature with a candor mingled with an originality and an ingenuousness such as one seldom encounters except in children. He spoke of his scattered household with a tenacious faith, and he greeted the future with that smiling gravity one usually sees only in men unbalanced by religion or intoxicated by glory and success.

In the evening, when the approach. of darkness inclines one to look back with a pitiless glance upon circumstances and upon oneself, he would gaily invite me to try my hand at checkers, and this seductive game would lead us to the threshold of sleep.

The pleasure it gave me to be with Dauche led me one day, in the presence of the doctor, into a discreet little eulogy of his character.

This doctor, a man who had reached the end of youth, tall, bald, and stooping, had in his face, which was overspread by a straggling beard, a somber expression that was full of a timid goodness.

"Fate," I said, "does not choose its victims.. It's a great pity that it should attack such generous natures, but marvelous that it should n't succeed in altering them more."

We were walking slowly along a narrow road, deep among hazel thickets. My companion gave a curious shrug of his shoulders and threw a glance all about him, as if to assure himself that we were alone.

"You seem," he said, "to take a great

deal of pleasure in the company of Monsieur Dauche, and that is quite natural. Just the same, I have already begged you not to extend your walks together too far from the neighborhood of the château, and I must repeat this advice to you."

The tone in which these words were uttered suddenly filled me with a sort of anguish, and I did not hide my astonishment.

"Dauche," I said, "seems to me to be having a very peaceful convalescence. Do you fear anything from that scratch on his forehead?"

The doctor had stopped. With the point of his shoe he was busy scraping one of the stones in the road, and he did not raise his head.

"That scratch," he said very rapidly, "is a far more serious wound than you would believe."

A painful silence followed, and as I stood there stupidly, the doctor continued, with many hesitations and much

reserve:

"We are beginning to know all about these wounds in the head. Your comrade does not know and must not know the gravity of his condition. He does not even know that the projectile which struck him has not been extracted. And even if the thing were possible-" Then suddenly the doctor rambled off into philosophical considerations that seemed to come at once easily and hesitantly, as if he were in a labyrinth that was familiar to him:

"We have done a great deal, a great deal. We have even brought the dead back to life; but we cannot bring all the dead back to life. There have been some very difficult problems. We think we have solved them, but there are some problems that cannot be solved. I 'm not speaking of God. The very idea of God seems to be something apart from the great catastrophe. I'm not speaking of God, but of men. They must be told things very simply. There are some wounds that we cannot heal; when people stop making such wounds, the problem will no longer exist. That is one solution; but the men of my profession are too full of pride to suggest it to the world, and the world is too mad to listen to it."

I had enough respect for these digressions not to interrupt their course; however when silence fell again, I murmured in a low voice:

"Really, you say that this projectile-"

"It is inaccessible. You understand, Monsieur? Inaccessible. It is rather shameful for a man who is full of vanity to have to confess such things, but that at least is honest. And, besides, it's a fact. Man has placed it where it is; he is powerless to get it out again."

I felt troubled by the personality of my companion, and above all I was very much disturbed by his words. I stammered:

"However, it 's possible to live with that "

"No," he answered in a heavy voice; "there is nothing to do but to die."

We continued to walk as far as the border of the wood. The bright light over the damp meadows seemed to recall the doctor to the formalities of professional etiquette, for he said in a changed voice:

"Excuse me, Monsieur, for having forced upon you considerations that must naturally remain foreign to your personal way of looking at things. I am not sorry to have had the chance to speak to you about Dauche just now. He has not, I believe, any near relatives in the free part of France. You are interested in him; it is my duty, therefore, to warn you that he is a lost man. I shall even add, since you seek his companionship, that at any moment there may appear symptoms that will prove rapidly fatal."

I had known Dauche for only a short time, but I felt overwhelmed. A few meaningless words came to my lips. I said, perhaps, something like, "It 's terrible!" But the doctor concluded his meditation with a colorless smile.

"Alas! Monsieur, you will do as I and as many others have done; you will grow accustomed to live in the company of men who still share our universe, but whom we know unquestionably to be already dead."

I could not grow accustomed to anything of the sort. This conversation

took place late one morning. I spent the rest of the day avoiding the sight of Dauche, a bit of cowardice the cause of which lay in my clumsiness in concealing my thoughts.

The night found me unable to sleep, but it was doubly welcome, for it provided me with the time to conquer my impressions, and also gave me an appearance that made it very proper for me to blame my illness for the change in my behavior.

As I was getting out of bed, Dauche proposed that we should take a walk together through the woods. I was about to refuse, but his smile was so cordial, so brotherly, that I had not the courage to use my fatigue as an excuse. sides, the weather was radiant.

Be

The splendor of the strong, still sunshine, the delicate colors of a landscape swathed in the mists of early morning, perhaps also some personal need for happiness and forgetfulness-all these things abruptly turned my thoughts away from that sort of abyss into which I had seen them plunged.

Dauche began to run through the high, golden grass, which was slowly withering. You would have said his laughter was that of a boy. He imitated, with all sorts of anecdotes and phrases, the games of his own children, and he stopped suddenly, full of a tender gravity, to speak of the one he had not yet seen and of the wife who was awaiting him in exile.

Nothing in nature seemed to him contemptible or unworthy of interest. He breathed in the fragrance of all the flowers, and had an eye for every object, crushed the aromatic herbs between his hands, tasted the blackberries and the nuts in the thickets. He pointed out to me a thousand things that I blushed never to have noticed before. After that he dragged me through an interminable adventure in speculation, where I was able to follow him only with a grumbling awkwardness, like an old man whirled away in a dance.

We were coming back to the château, very proud of our appetites and of the speed with which the hours had passed, when, at the turn of a path, the words and the advice of the doctor rose suddenly from the depths of my soul.

was like the little rap of a finger, brief and imperious, on a door. I realized then that in a dull sort of way I had never ceased to think of them. But as I looked once more at Dauche, who seemed like a fair, ripe ear of corn, in the beauty of the midday, I shook my head and concluded, "That honorable doctor is mistaken," and during the whole of that day I remained happy.

The next morning, as I was taking my time about getting up, and dreamily counting the dancing flowers on the hangings, I caught the measured breathing of Dauche, who was still asleep. At once a voice said in my ear, "That man over there is going to die."

Then a desire seized me to get away, to escape from Dauche and from that château, to plunge into the din and confusion that reigned in the interior of the country.

I had lost all thought of sleep, and I began to reason with a cold lucidity. To put it briefly, I had known this charming man only for a short time, and there was nothing I could do for him. He was in the hands of skilful doctors who would exhaust for his benefit all the resources of their science. I could forget his unhappy fate all the more justifiably because at this very moment it was shared by a great many human beings who were young and worthy of interest. My presence could be no help to him, and being with him constantly would, on the contrary, contribute to depress the moral strength of which I still stood in great need.

As a result of all these considerations, that very morning, when I found myself alone with our doctor, I begged him on some pretext to hasten my exchange to another hospital.

"I see no objection to that," he said, "considering the state of your wound. It shall be as you desire."

This immediate assent was a relief and somewhat of a surprise; but when my eyes met those of the doctor, I found in them a sad and troubled expression that made me ashamed.

In fact, I was so disturbed by my weakness at the end of a quarter of an hour I went to the doctor and asked him if it was possible to change my plan

and complete my cure at the Château de S.

He smiled with an odd air of satisfaction, and assured me that I could remain as long as it suited me.

Coming after so much indecision, my resolution brought me peace. I passed the greater part of the day in my room and found some distraction in reading. Toward evening, a comrade who had lost an arm at Berry-au-Bac came very secretly to find us and led us to the orange-house, where two musicians from a neighboring regiment were giving a concert.

I had a great love for music, while at the same time failing to perceive in it any exact intellectual significance. The fact is, I had not till then been in a position to discover with what authority a sequence of sounds and harmonies can convert to its own use the state of our souls and precipitate our emotions.

A violin, accompanied by a piano, was playing one of Bach's sonatas. They suddenly swung into an adagio that was full of poignant majesty. Several times I felt as if some person, invisible and unknown, placed a hand on my arm and murmured, "How, how is it possible for you to forget that he is going to die?"

I got up as the concert was drawing to a close and fled, the prey of a genuine torment.

"What on earth 's the matter with you?" asked Dauche, who had come out after me. "You seem ill or unhappy."

"Both," I answered in a voice that I could no longer control. "Did n't you hear what that violin was playing?"

"Of course," he said dreamily. "Nothing could be more purely joyous."

I looked at him furtively, but I could make nothing of it. Only that evening, alone in the darknes with my thoughts, did I understand that fate had reserved for me a singular share in the destiny . of my friend. Dauche was condemned; he must die; he was going to die: but, in a sense, another than he was charged to endure his agony.

I deny that I am made differently from most men. The war has tried me severely without upsetting my imagination, and my wound was not one of

those that alter the normal functionings of an ordinary healthy spirit.

Consequently, I feel quite sure that the nervous ordeal I went through from that day forward would have overwhelmed in the same way any man who had been unexpectedly caught by the same mischance.

Despite the sinister experiences of the battle-field, I was to have a new experience of death, one that was terrible by its very length. It is hardly possible to live without being able to conceive every moment what the next moment will be like, and it is a tragic thing to carry within oneself a certainty that freezes every project, every intention at the very outset. Illness creates situations like this in everyday life; but their sadness is tempered by hope, even by one's increasing habit of giving things up. I owe to the war the knowledge of a new anguish, that of living beside a human being whom I knew, despite his strength and beauty, to be living under the threat of a terrible doom, and who had no future save that which hope and ignorance gave him.

This ignorance of our own selves is a very precious thing and makes us envy the complete unconsciousness of animals and plants. It enabled Dauche to live joyously on the very edge of the abyss. I was there to take upon myself everything dramatic in the situation, just as if it had been against the order of nature for so great a tragedy to remain unexperienced.

The first days of November had come. Autumn was fading in all its magnificence. We had not given up our walks. I found that I was ever driven to them despite myself, as if the whole spectacle of the dying year was particularly suited to express, to the point of satiation, the bitter poignancy of our friendship.

We often climbed the hill that overlooked the plain of Rheims. The fury of the war seemed, like the sap of the vegetation, to be cooling little by little, and retreating underground. The guns grumbled lazily and wearily; the leafless woods revealed the military works that they had hidden all summer under their foliage.