The quotation, lilted inanely as a nursery rime, pierced her heart like a flight of silver arrows.
"You have not a very pleasant business," the correspondent continued, addressing a soldier at work in an open grave.
"I've 'ad two years in the trenches, sir, and I'm glad to get it," he replied.
"Little Christian crosses, planted against the heathen, creeping nearer and nearer to the Rhine," murmured Julian Sinclair, on the other side of May Margaret.
The multiplicity of the ways in which it seemed possible for both soldiers and civilians to regard the war was beginning to rob her of the power to think.
On their way back, through the dusk, they passed a body of men marching to the trenches, with a song that she had heard Brian humming:
"Fat Fritz went out, all camouflaged, like a beautiful bumble-bee,
With daffodil stripes and 'airy legs to see what he could see,
By the light of the moon, in No Man's Land, he climbed an apple tree
And he put on his big round spectacles, to look for gay Paree.
But I don't suppose he'll do it again
For months, and months, and months;
But I don't suppose he'll do it again
For months, and month, and months;
For Archie is only a third class shot,
But he brought him down at once,
AND
I don't suppose he'll do it again
For months, and months, and months."