At last she turns and goes blindly back to the room where they had breakfast; she sees once more the chair he used, the crumpled morning paper, the discarded cigarette. And there let us leave her with tear-stained face and a pathetic little sodden handkerchief clutched in one hand. "O God! dear God! send him back to me." Our women do not show us this side very much when we are on leave; perhaps it is as well, for the ground on which we stand is holy....
And what of the man? The train is grinding through Herne Hill when he puts down his Times and catches sight of another man in his brigade also returning from leave.
"Hullo, old man! What sort of a time have you had?"
"Top-hole. How's yourself? Was that your memsahib at the station?"
"Yes. Dislike women at these partings as a general rule—but she's wonderful."
"They're pulling the brigade out to rest, I hear."
"So I believe. Anyway, I hope they've buried that dead Hun just in front of us. He was getting beyond a joke...."
He is back in the life over the water again; there is nothing incongruous to him in his sequence of remarks; the time of his leave has been too short for the contrast to strike him. In fact, the whirl of gaiety in which he has passed his seven days seems more unreal than his other life—than the dead German. And it is only when a man is wounded and comes home to get fit, when he idles away the day in the home of his fathers, with a rod or a gun to help him back to convalescence, when the soothing balm of utter peace and contentment creeps slowly through his veins, that he looks back on the past few months as a runner on a race just over. He has given of his best; he is ready to give of his best again; but at the moment he is exhausted; panting, but at rest For the time the madness has left him; he is sane. But it is only for the time....