I go and sit with my friends about the big board table, in the place where the motors used to be kept. I play cards with my friends, the twelve convalescents. I play badly, for I hate cards, but they like to have a guest. They try to arrange the game so that I may win. They want me to win; they think that I will enjoy it better. If they knew how bored I am they would be dreadfully upset. I wish I loved cards and could play well, to please them.
Towards evening they are certain to be cross with one another.
One after the other they will soon be going back to the Front, all of them. There is not one of them who will go unwillingly. They have been there, they know what it is, but there is not one who will grumble when he goes back, or fail when he faces that again. Every one of them, when he goes back, will say the same thing. "Of course I must go back, all the comrades are there." "Tous les copains sont là-bas." But in the meantime they quarrel.
From the doors of the garage, wide, one sees the sunset among the mountains. The bats flit across and the owls call. The dusk comes, velvet-thick and soft, with smells of fields and vineyards and of the town's hearth fires, and with the myriad voices of cigale and frog and sleepy bird, and with the small life noises of the town. Gathering up, and folding in, the night comes.
There is electric light in the garage that my friends are very proud of indeed. A huge naked bulb dangles from a cord over the table where we sit playing cards.
Francine
The son of Francine is home on leave.
Francine comes every day to help in the kitchen. She was scrubbing the kitchen's grey stone flags when her son came.
He came swinging up the path between the wheat and poppies and cornflowers. He came up the terrace steps, in his leggings and his béret, a fine young diable bleu.
Francine came, running, wiping her red hands in her apron, suddenly beautiful and very proud.