“Behind the lines—in the back areas. I should have been all right if I had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to the devil.”
“Not as bad as that,” I said.
“Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the flame, “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and, afterwards, in this cushie job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable, along the way to Hell. There was little Marguérite in Amiens—such a kid! Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely but too well. I had just come down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with Marguérite was like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked the flowers of life, and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves beyond the forest.”
He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words:
“The howling of the wolves!”
Somebody was singing “John Peel”:
“D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay,
D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day,
D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away
With his horn and his hounds in the morning?”