Others come, to talk of their affairs and the course of events in the district. There is a regular buzz. So-and-so has been killed, but So-and-so is made an officer. So-and-so has got a clerking job. Here in the town, So-and-so has got rich. How's the War going on?
They surround me, with questioning faces. And yet it is I, still more than they, who am one immense question.
* * * * * *
CHAPTER XVIII
EYES THAT SEE
Two days have passed. I get up, dress myself, and open my shutters.
It is Sunday, as you can see in the street.
I put on my clothes of former days. I catch myself paying spruce attention to my toilet, since it is Sunday, by reason of the compulsion one feels to do the same things again.
And now I see how much my face has hollowed, as I compare it with the one I had left behind in the familiar mirror.
I go out, and meet several people. Madame Piot asks me how many of the enemy I have killed. I reply that I killed one. Her tittle-tattle accosts another subject. I feel the enormous difference there was between what she asked me and what I answered.
The streets are clad in the mourning of closed shops. It is still the same empty and hermetically sealed face of the day of holiday. My eyes notice, near the sunken post, the old jam-pot, which has not moved.