"I see."
"The commandant would like to join you for breakfast."
"In the officers' mess?"
"No. Here."
"Please tell him that I would be honored."
"Good. Can you dress yourself?"
"I'm all right, thanks to you, Captain. I feel as if I'd had a week's rest on some quiet beach."
"I'll get the commandant, then. The corporal will show you the way to the washroom. I've laid out my razor and shaving things for you."
It was good to stand on steadied legs again, good to walk erect like a man. The razor had a nice edge. It sliced through the stems of the two-day beard without snagging. For some reason, the efficiency of the razor delighted Hall beyond measure. He studied the results of the shave in the wall mirror, then looked for signs of his illness. Two days were lost, he thought, two days of which he could account for but a few hours. The doctor could fill in most of the second day. The first night was something Hall himself could remember. It was like a bad dream one longs to forget, but he could remember the bus, the field, the ditch, the rock pile. He could remember staggering, crawling, getting sick, passing out and crawling and passing out again. But there were at least ten hours that remained a total blank; that portion of the day between the time he blacked out in the café near the Spanish line's pier and the moment he became aware of the kid in the bus.
An enlisted man was cleaning up the commandant's room when Hall returned. "The major will be here in five minutes," he told Hall. "And in the meanwhile, he sent you these." He handed Hall a flat tin of American cigarettes.