Winn had just returned from his evening round of the trenches. Lionel was resting in his dug-out; he heard Winn’s approach. Winn was coughing again — a little choking, short cough.
He bent double and crouched down beside Lionel without speaking.
“Well,” said Lionel, “to-morrow we’ll be out of this. About time too — with that cough of yours.”
Winn was silent for a moment, then he said, “I suppose you know I’m nearly done?”
Lionel bowed his head. “Yes,” he muttered, “I suppose I know it.”
After a pause Winn began again.
“There isn’t much good talking, of course. On the other hand, you may as well know what I feel. I’ve had tremendous luck in one way and another. I never expected to get the regiment, for instance — and your coming out here and all that. I’ve seen how jolly things could be.”
“You haven’t had them,” said Lionel in a low voice. “The things you wanted most, I mean. Your pitch was queered too soon.”
“I don’t know,” said Winn, painstakingly. “In a sense, of course, you haven’t had things if you’ve only seen ’em. Still when you come to think of it, you partly have. Look at the Germans; we’ve worked considerably into them without seeing ’em, haven’t we? What I mean is that I appreciate goodness now; I see its point. Not that I’d have kept clear a moment by myself. I hope you quite understand that? I’ve been a blackguard and I’d have been a worse one if I’d had the chance. But I’m glad I hadn’t the chance now. I don’t know that I’m putting the thing straight — but you know what she’s like? Thank God I couldn’t alter her!”
They listened for a moment to the night. Their ears were always awake, registering sounds from the sodden, death-ridden fields beneath them, and above, but they heard nothing beyond the drip of the rain, an occasional groan from a man tortured by rheumatism, and the long-drawn scream of a distant shell.