There was a silence. From the direction of the infirmary a man with a packet of medicines in his hand began making his way towards the door.
“Many guys in there?” asked Fuselli in a low voice as the man brushed past him.
When the door closed again the man beside Fuselli, who was tall and broad shouldered with heavy black eyebrows, burst out, as if he were saying something he'd been trying to keep from saying for a long while:
“It won't be right if that sickness gets me; indeed it won't.... I've got a girl waitin' for me at home. It's two years since I ain't touched a woman all on account of her. It ain't natural for a fellow to go so long as that.
“Why didn't you marry her before you left?” somebody asked mockingly.
“Said she didn't want to be no war bride, that she could wait for me better if I didn't.”
Several men laughed.
“It wouldn't be right if I took sick an' died of this sickness, after keepin' myself clean on account of that girl.... It wouldn't be right,” the man muttered again to Fuselli.
Fuselli was picturing himself lying in his bunk with a swollen neck, while his arms and legs stiffened, stiffened.
A red-faced man half way up the passage started speaking: