He opened an alleyway for the spider in the sand, and, with his head down close, watched it hustling away. "It's the same with us; we know we have every chance of being killed in this war, and we have to go, and we're glad to. It's not courage or sacrifice; it's instinct."
"You think so, Leonard?"
"It's not nice to lie alongside of a man you've killed and watch him die," said Leonard, inconsistently, eyes looking down into the sand, head pillowed on his arm.
"Did you have to, Len?"
"I didn't exactly mean to kill him. He was wounded," murmured Leonard, raising little white pools in the sand with his nostrils. "We had a rotten day and had taken a small position which didn't amount to anything when we got it. Wasn't I in a nasty sulk! Some of my green men had funked just at the crucial moment, and I had all but shot one. The ground was covered with wounded. Couldn't tell theirs from ours. Awful mess. I was coming back across the field over dead bodies, and cursing every one I stumbled across. I suppose I felt pretty sick. I saw a helmet gleaming in some burnt shrubbery. It was a nice shiny one, with an eagle crest. It occurred to me you'd written me to send you one, 'because all the girls had them'—remember?"
Leonard rolled over close beside her and his head went down into the sand again.
"I went to pick it up, but it seems I got something else with it. A great blonde fellow in gray, all powdered with dust and bleeding,—Jove! how he was bleeding!—came up with it. It surprised me and he managed to knife me, and over I went, on top of him. I had my pistol cocked, and I let him have it right in the chest. I must have fainted, because when I came to I was on my back and the moon was shining in my eyes. The man in gray was there alongside of me, supporting himself on one arm and looking at me.
"'I am dying,' he said in German.
"That didn't seem very interesting to me. So is everybody else, I thought; and I didn't answer. Presently he said it again, in English: 'I'm dying.'
"'Really?' said I.